New Home Sales Stay Strong; Prices Surge

New Single Family Home Sales stood at a seasonally adjust annual rate of 464,000 in November according to estimates released today by The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  That figure is technically lower month-over-month only because October's pace was revised higher to 474,000 from 444,000 previously.

At the time, October's 444,000 pace represented a 25.4 percent month-over-month increase, which was the biggest monthly advance since May 1980.  But now September has also been revised higher as well, moving up to an adjust 403,000 from 354,000 originally.  The net effect is that October's huge 25.4 percent gain is now a 17.6 percent gain even though the outright pace of purchases is higher.

Sales in the Northeast increased 15.2 percent both from October and from November 2012 (33,000 sales in either case) to a rate of 38,000 sales in Novemeber. 

The Midwest fell off a cliff versus last month (down  26.6 percent), but managed a modest gain year-over-year (6.8 percent) to an annualized rate of 47,000 units. 

Sales in the South were at an annualized rate of 261,000, a more modest change of 9.1 percent after having risen 28.2 percent last month.  

Sales in the West rose 31.1 percent, the highest in this report, to an annual rate of 118,000 new homes.  This also made for the report-high in terms of year-over-year regional improvement--19.2% from November 2012's 99,000 annual pace.

On a non-annualized basis there were an estimated 38,000 new homes sold in October and 33,000 sales in November.  Well over half of these sales were in the South in both periods (20k in Nov and 23k in Oct).

There were an estimated 167,000 new homes for sale at the end of October.  This is estimated to be a 4.3 month supply at the current rate of sales, 12.1 percent higher than a year earlier when there were 149,000 available homes.

The median price of a new home sold in November was $270,900 compared to $259,200 in October 2013 and $245,200 in November 2012.  The average prices in the two periods were $340,300 and $292,200 respectively.