ARLINGTON, Va.—July’s new home sales of 635,000 units reflects a 12.8% decline after a large upward revision to estimated June sales of 728,000 units.
The market has been volatile recently due to the countervailing effects of declining mortgage rates and increasing economic uncertainty, said Curt Long, NAFCU’s Chief Economist and Vice President of Research.
“Large revisions are common in the relatively thin market for new homes, but even by those standards this was an unusually massive miss on the initial estimate,” said Long in a Marco Data Flash Report. “Inventory constraints have eased somewhat, and there has been a slight but badly needed increase in construction activity at lower price points.”
The Northeast was the only region that saw an increase in new home sales with a 50% increase. The Midwest (-11.1%), South (-16.1%) and the West (-14.2%) all saw dips in sales of new homes.
However, year over year, July saw a 4.3% increase in new home sales from July 2018. The number of homes left on the market grew from 333,000 units the previous month to 337,000 units in July, Long said.
Long believes if economic uncertainty fears were to subside, then the housing market would be in good shape after years of flat growth.