New home sales easily beat expectations with a double-digit jump in December, according to the Census Bureau’s monthly new residential sales report…(Census Bureau)
- M-O-M: Sales of new single-family houses jumped 11.9% to a seasonally adjusted rate of 811,000 in December.
- Y-O-Y: Despite the big jump, new home sales are still down 14% when compared to December 2020.
BEAT THE STREET: Economists had projected a much smaller gain of 2.1% for the month.
Defying the trend for the year, inventory was actually up slightly for the month and prices were down
- The median sales price was down 9.4% to $416,900 in December.
- The average sales price was down 5.1% to $457,3000 in December.
- The new home inventory level increased slightly to 403,000, from 402,000 in November. However, because the sales pace increased the monthly supply rate fell to 6.0 from 6.5 in November.
NOTE: Sales for the year ended up 7.3% below 2020 at 762,000.
Conor Sen had an important observation looking at inventory based on construction stages, “Fewer than 10% of the new homes for sale in the United States are completed — lots of people waiting for windows, garage doors, and such”