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US new home sales cool in April

AFP
After declining in April, US new home sales rebounded in May while the median price surged 11.5% to a record $345,800. Sales of existing homes also have been on the rise.

Sales of new US homes experienced a sharp slowdown in April after hitting a record in March, and prices also fell, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.

The supply of new homes showed signs of increasing somewhat in an otherwise tight market the has left homebuyers squeezed for choice.

Sales of new single-family houses plunged 11.4 percent from March to an annual rate of 569,000, seasonally adjusted. However, sales for the prior month were revised sharply upward to 642,000 -- the highest level since October 2007.

Analysts had been expecting a drop of only 5.8 percent in the latest month.

The month-to-month decline was in large part driven by falling sales in the western United States, which tumbled 26.3 percent to 126,000, the lowest level for the region in 18 months.

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Even with the pullback, total sales still were 0.5 percent higher than the same month in 2016.

The average sales price fell 4.4 percent to $368,300 last month, after rising in the two prior months. The median price also fell 3.0 percent to $309,200.

Analysts noted that the housing figures are frequently erratic and the underlying trends still pointed upwards.

"April's monthly numbers are just barely statistically significant," Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist at the online real estate firm Trulia, wrote in a research note. He highlighted that the margin of error for the data was 10.5 percent.

"So we should take them with a grain of salt."

Sales have averaged 604,000 a month in 2017, up from 561,000 last year, according to Jim O'Sullivan of High Frequency Economics.

The estimated inventory of new homes for sale at the end of April stood at 268,000, matching March, the highest since July 2009.

At the current sales pace, that represented a supply of 5.7 months, the highest since September 2015. That was up from 4.9 months in March, and 5.2 in January and February.

The number of new homes for sale but still under construction stood at 157,000, the highest level since October 2008, the start of the global financial crisis.