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New Home Sales Up 6.7% 07-02-18 | Economic News

New Home Sales Up 6.7%
Despite High Prices and Low Inventory

An article published by the Wall Street Journal proclaims that "New home purchases in the [South] rose 17.9%. The largest gain since the end of 2014. Meanwhile, sales in the Northeast and West declined and purchases were flat in the Midwest in May." Photo Credits: Flickr.com

The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development state that the total amount of new homes sold in May 2018 rose 6.7%, despite high selling prices and a low inventory.

(Read this article on landscapearchitect.com regarding housing starts in the month of April: Monthly Housing Starts Drop 3.7 Percent.
(https://www.landscapearchitect.com/research/article-a.php?number=30064))

In total, 689,000 new residences were sold, with 299,000 added to the inventory. This is an increase of 85,000 new homes sold over May 2017.

The median sales price was reported at $313,000, with an average sales price of $368,500. Data from Zillow.com prices the median of all home sales at $215,000, which they say will go up 6.5% over the next year.

The non-seasonally-adjusted, median amount of months a home was on the market in May was 3.7 months. This is 0.6 months slower than May 2017, when new homes sold in just 3.1 months of being on the market.

Six percent of all new home sales in May 2018 were over $750,000, while, on the opposite end of the spectrum, just three percent of new homes sold were valued at under $150,000.

According to the data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, a large majority of all new home sales in the U.S. occur in the South. In May 2018, there were 409,000 new homes sold in the southern states, which was well more than double the amount of sales in the West (157,000).

Data derived from census.gov, unless otherwise stated.