Washington (awp / dpa) – Sales of new homes in the United States started to rise again in July, after two months of decline, even climbing more than expected, according to figures from the Commerce Department released Tuesday.
In July, 708,000 new homes were sold at an annual rate (sales for the whole year if this rate was maintained).
This represents an increase of 1% compared to June, whose sales were also revised up, to 701,000 instead of 676,000 initially announced.
It is also slightly better than expected, since analysts were only anticipating 700,000 sales.
But that’s still well below the peak of 993,000 sales recorded in January, and that’s 27.2% lower than sales in July 2020.
New home prices began to soar again after a respite in June, reaching a median level of $ 390,500 and an average level of $ 446,000, new records.
The real estate market has particularly benefited from the pandemic. The desires for space and greenery of executives now working from home have boosted sales, against the backdrop of historically low interest rates.
But this strong demand created a shortage of available goods, pushing up prices, also driven by global supply difficulties, which made building materials more expensive.
As for older homes, sales continued to increase in July, driven by the upscale market, the National Federation of American Real Estate Agents (NAR) said on Monday.
However, professionals are starting to see an increase in stocks of goods for sale, which should help ease the pressure on prices.
afp / lk
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