WASHINGTON – Sales of new single-family homes rose 2.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted rate of 858,000 units per year from the revised February rate of 836,000 housing units, according to a report today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But the March rate remained 23.5 percent below the year-ago estimate of 1.12 million units per year.
The increase was the first in three months, Bloomberg News noted, and was widely credited to last month’s mild weather. But it fell short of the 890,000-units-per-year median forecast from a Bloomberg survey of 71 economists.
The median price of new houses sold also rose last month, increasing 1.6 percent to $254,000, or 6.4 percent above the year-ago figure.
The inventory of new houses – the seasonally adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of the month – declined to 545,000 from 546,000 at the end of February. At the current sales pace, that represented a 7.8-month supply, retreating from February’s 16-year high of 8.1 months.
In the Northeast, the rate of new single-family home sales rose 50.0 percent to 72,000 units per year from February’s 48,000 per year. The new level was 18.0 percent above the year-ago rate of 61,000 units per year.
Among other regions, only the Midwest also showed a month-over-month sales increase and no other region showed a year-over-year gain.
“Considering the weather was unseasonably mild in March, the report certainly wasn’t overly positive news and is consistent with the idea that sales are still struggling,” Phillip Neuhart, an economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, N.C., told Bloomberg. “We don’t see sales bottoming until sometime mid-year.”
Additional information is available at www.census.gov/newhomesales.
