The Census Bureau released its new home data for March 2009 this morning, and the above charts show the picture. The first chart shows just how far new home sales have fallen. For March 2009, new home sales were 356,000 units on a seasonally adjusted annual rate - down .6% from February.
The second chart shows the months’ of supply for new homes at the current sales rate. For March 2009, the supply was 10.7 months which is slightly improved from the February supply of 11.2 months. The chart also shows how elevated this rate is on a historical level.
The third chart shows how long new homes are sitting on the market from completion until they are sold. The median number of months for sale since completion was 10.2 months in March 2009. As the chart shows new homes are taking longer to sell then at any time on record.
The forth chart shows the median sale price for a new home. The median sale price for a new home was $201,400 in March 2009. This price was down 3.5% from a month earlier and down over 12% from March 2008.
Data Source:
U.S. Census Bureau
=====================================================================================
Can you add a chart with “existing” home prices. New home prices is fine. But it’s not reflective of the national median price of homes since about 90+% of all home sales are of existing houses, which have a much lower median price.
Comment by Nicey — July 16, 2009 @ 1:18 pm
Thanks for the comment. Yes, I’ll try to put a chart or two out on existing home sales and prices soon. In this post I was just trying to cover the newly released data on new home sales. You are right that 90%+ of home sales are existing homes and their median price is much lower. The last I saw was in the $175K range.
Comment by admin — July 16, 2009 @ 3:49 pm