New residential sales saw a big drop in February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 775,000 as inventory levels and COVID continued to hold back housing sales as we head into the typical buying spring season. (CB)
M-O-M: Sales were down 18.2% from the the revised January rate of 948,000.
Y-O-Y: Sales were up 8.2% when compred to February 2020.
Inventory actually increased 26% in February to 312,000 which represents a supply of 4.8 months at the current sales rate. Skyrocketing housing prices and loosening COVD restrictions is clearly incentivizing sellers to list. However, even with the jump inventory levels are still down 26% from February 2020.
If you were selling you probably pretty happy with the listing and the offer.
- The median sales price of was $349,400
- The average sales price was $416,000.
On its face, this does seem like s troubling a report. However, when you actually break down the numbers things are on the up and up. As I mentioned yesterday, the glut of real estate agents may be quite busy when the spring buying season really raps up.
NOTE: Every region of the country saw a drop in sales. The northeast saw the smallest drop at -11.6%, followed by the south at -14.7%, the west at -16.4%, and the midwest saw a whopping 37.5% decline. Year-over-year was a different story. The south led the way with 20.2% growth followed by the midwest with 4.9% growth. The west saw a drop of 8.1% and the northeast fell 11.6%.