Sales of new single-family houses in June 2015 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 482,000, down 6.8% from May’s revised rate of 517,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
On a yearly basis, this is 18.1% above the June 2014 estimate of 408,000.
The median sales price of new houses sold in June 2015 was $281,800; the average sales price was $328,700.
The seasonally adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of June was 215,000. This represents a supply of 5.4 months at the current sales rate.
"Overall, it’s encouraging to see more homes being sold in the lower-price segments indicating that builders may be increasingly accommodating first-time buyers and affordability-constrained buyers," said Selma Hepp, chief economist with Trulia.
"The new home market will continue improving due to several important tailwinds – robust job growth, pent-up demand driven by both demographics and economic recovery, and simply extremely low levels of construction following the housing collapse,"she continued.
“It would’ve been tough to have another month of gains after last month’s robust new home sales reading. You never want to see the data regress, but we remain optimistic that we’re still on a long-term upward trajectory,” said Tom Wind, EverBank’s executive vice president of Home Lending.
