New home sales in the U.S. showed a substantial decrease in the month of April, according to a report released by the Commerce Department on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The report said new home sales slumped by 5.9 percent to an annual rate of 863,000 in April after jumping by 7.4 percent to a significantly downwardly revised rate of 917,000 in March.<\/p>\n
Economists had expected new home sales to tumble by 7.0 percent to a rate of 950,000 from the 1.021 million originally reported for the previous month.<\/p>\n
Despite the steep monthly drop, new home sales in April were still up by 48.3 percent compared to 582,000 in the same month a year ago.<\/p>\n
The Commerce Department also said the median sales price of new houses sold in April was $372,400, up 11.4 percent from $334,200 in March and up 20.1 percent from $310,100 a year ago.<\/p>\n
The report showed there were an estimated 316,000 new houses for sale at the end of April compared to 304,000 at the end of March. <\/p>\n
The estimate of new houses for sale represents 4.4 months of supply at the current sales rate, up from 4.0 months in March but down from 6.6 months a year ago.<\/p>\n
“Soaring home prices are taking a toll on sales — with both median and average home prices jumping to record highs – and we expect the pace of sales to moderate further over the rest of 2021,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, Lead U.S. Economist at Oxford Economics.<\/p>\n
Last Friday, the National Association of Realtors released a separate report unexpectedly showing a continued decrease in existing home sales in April.<\/p>\n
NAR said existing home sales tumbled by 2.7 percent to an annual rate of 5.85 million in April after plunging by 3.7 percent to a rate of 6.01 million in March. The slump surprised economists, who had expected existing home sales to surge up by 2.0 percent.<\/p>\n
Existing home sales declined for the third straight month but were still up by 33.9 percent compared to the same month a year ago. <\/p>\n