New Residential Home Sales Increase 1.6% in November 2011

In November, New Residential Single Family Home Sales increased +1.6%, or 315,000 annualized sales. But watch for it, this report has a ±12.2% monthly margin of error. New single family home sales have increased 9.8% from a year ago.

 

New Home Sales

 

These numbers are seasonally adjusted, but also with large error margins, where the margin of error is outside the actual reported percentages. Weather can influence sales. For example, the error window, (90% deviation), for the change from one year ago is ±19.5%. Still a trend is a trend and we're seeing a consistent rise in sales.

The supply of new homes declined -3.2%, now at 6.0 months, at current sales rates, of inventory, or 158,000 and a -26.8% decrease in supply from November 2010.

 

new home inventory

 

Both the median price and average new home price dropped from last month by -4.1%. November's average price was $242,900, down from October's $253,200. The average home price is down to October 2003 levels.

 

average new home price

 

In November, the median price was $214,100, whereas October's median price was $222,600, a monthly percentage decline of -3.8%. The graph below are the monthly median home prices.

 

median new home price

 

If one looks at median and average sales prices, they are still out of alignment with wages and salaries, which are flat for over a decade, even with record low mortgage rates.

The median time new homes were for sale was 7.4 months, a low not seen since early 2008 and the same as November.

 

New Home Sales

 

The variance in monthly data is so large, all one can say is the volume in new home sales seems to have stabilized to the new normal and inventories are returning to normal.

Calculated Risk is a fantastic analysis site on housing data compares new home sales to recessionary periods and goes back to 1963 in data comparisons.

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