February New Home Sales: New Home Inventory Breaks 300K for First Time in Nearly a Decade
- New home sales fell in February for the third consecutive month, declining 0.6 percent to 618,000 units (SAAR), according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
- The number of new homes on the market increased by 7,000 units to 301,000 units (SAAR), the first month since March 2009 that there have been more than 300,000 new homes on the market.
- The median seasonally adjusted price of new homes sold in January fell 0.9 percent to $326,000 after touching an all-time high in November.
New home sales fell for a third consecutive month in February, edging down by 0.6 percent to 618,000 units at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR), according to the U.S. Census Bureau. New home sales are now up 0.5 percent over the past year.
That’s the longest string of monthly declines in new home sales since spring 2014 – and February marks the first month that new home inventory has been above the 300,000 threshold since May 2009.
Inventory was the silver lining in the report. The number of new homes on the market increased 2 percent, about 6,000 units, from January to 305,000 units (SAAR). Over the past year, new home inventory climbed 16 percent.
January sales were revised upward – as were November sales – but December sales were revised very sharply downward. As a result, combined sales for the previous three months were revised lower by 36,000 units (SAAR).
Unlike existing home sales – where regional weakness was clearly associated with wintry February weather – new home sales fell in the West, which was largely unaffected by adverse weather, but increased in the Northeast, which took the brunt of February’s snow storms. Preliminary new home sales data can be noisy, and the initial print should be interpreted with some caution.
The median seasonally adjusted price of new homes sold in February increased by 0.7 percent from January to $330,100, after falling for the two previous months. It’s down from a peak of $334,900 in November 2017. Over the past year, the median seasonally-adjusted sale price of new homes is up 9.9 percent, or about $29,600.
