Sales of new homes plunged 18.2% in February
>> Sales of new homes plunged 18.2% in February as severe winter weather in many parts of the country and a lack of supply took a toll on the housing industry.
Sales of single-family homes dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 775,000 last month, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday, the slowest sales pace since May of last year.
Every region of the country experienced a drop-off in sales.
The median price of a new home sold in February was $349,400, up 5.3% from a year ago.
The same weather disruption was evident in the existing homes market, for which the U.S. released data Monday. The National Association of Realtors said that existing homes sales in February fell 6.6% from January to a seasonally-adjusted rate of 6.22 million annualized units. Sales were up 9.1% from February last year, before the pandemic upended the economy and temporarily held up home sales last spring.
The report Tuesday from the Commerce Department marked the first decline in sales of new homes in two months. Housing continues to be one of the few bright spots during the coronavirus pandemic. New home sales last year advanced to levels not seen since the housing boom of the mid-2000s.
For February, sales fell in every part of the country, led by a 37.5% drop in the Midwest and a 16.4% fall in the West. Sales declines 14.7% in the South and were down 11.6% in the Northeast.
Despite the hiccup, economists
don’t believe even skyrocketing prices will cool the U.S. housing market. High lumber costs, rising mortgage rates, though they remain near record lows, along with few properties available for sale, are pushing home ownership out of range for many.
“Home sales are still higher than a year earlier, and given the increased pace of building, new home sales should boom again this spring,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.
Underscoring how quickly homes were snapped up last month, 74% of homes sold in February were on the market less than a month, the NAR said.
The fact that homes are being snapped up so quickly and prices continue to climb, with many homes receiving multiple offers, implies that it is the lack of supply that’s mainly behind February’s sales decline, said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist.
“It’s the reason why prices are rising,” Yun said. “Demand appears to be very strong, reflected in the days on the market being so swift.”