• October new home sales totaled 999,000 (SAAR), down 0.3% from upwardly revised September numbers but up 41.5% from October 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
• The median sales price of new houses sold in October 2020 was $330,600, up 2.5% from a year ago.
• There were 278,000 new homes for sale at the end of October, flat from September and down 13.4% from the same time last year.

Low mortgage rates, an ongoing shortage of existing homes for sale and the allure of a brand new, never-lived-in home all helped the strong stretch of new home sales that began in the summer keep rolling right on through October. Initially reported data from August and September was revised upwards, with sales crossing 1 million in each of those months and only just falling short of the million mark in October — the strongest three-month stretch since mid-2006. Even as the spread of COVID-19 has grown more severe and reinvigorated economic uncertainty that was beginning to recede at the end of the summer, demand for housing remains firm. Homebuilders are certainly reading the tea leaves – a measure of new home sales expectations for the next six months is at a record high. And more sales means more construction means more sales: A large share (38.5%, up from 28.5% a year ago) of the new homes sold in October were not yet under construction. That means that both a good portion of last months’ housing starts — which were up almost 5% from September — very likely represent closed sales from several months ago, and that today’s strong sales figures bode well for continued strong building activity going forward. It’s possible that surging case volumes and overall economic uncertainty may begin to eat into the demand for new homes at some point, but for now, the housing market continues to hum along.