New Home Sales Top 1 Million, Setting Post-Recession High

[Joseph Scorese]

New Home Sales Top 1 Million, Setting Post-Recession High

New home sales reversed direction in March, fully recovering from the 18.2 percent nosedive those sales took in February. The Census Bureau said sales of newly constructed homes rose 20.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.021 million units. This is 66.8 percent higher than the sales $612,000 unit pace in March 2020, although that rate was impacted by the pandemic shutdowns and was the highest annual sales rate since 2005.

February's loss was also smaller than originally reported. Those sales were revised from 775,000 to 846,000 units.

Analysts' estimates fell far short of the numbers reported. Those polled had projected sales in a range of 820,000 to 950,000. The consensus was 887,000.

On a non-adjusted basis there were 97,000 new homes sold during the month, up from 70,000 the previous month. For the year-to-date sales have totaled 243,000 homes, a 34.4 percent increase over the 181,000 sales in the first three months of 2020.

The median price of a home sold in March was $330,800 and the average price was $397,800. In March 2020, the respective sales prices were $328,200 and $375,400.

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