Today the Commerce Department reported new home sales tumbled 12.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted 284,000 unit annual rate after a downwardly revised 325,000-unit pace in December. But, the big news in this report was a 36.5 percent drop in new home sales in the West.
The report showed that for January there were 188,000 new homes available for sale, the lowest since December 1967. The new home sales for January were down by 18.6 percent compared to a year ago.
Now from the ‘It’s always a good time to buy real estate crowd’ National Association of Realtors today, released a separate report that showed existing home sales in the U.S. rose for the third consecutive month in January.
The existing home sales rose 2.7 percent in January to an annual rate of 5.36 million. Many had expected the existing home sales to have also been down in January.