U.S. New Home Sales Climb 6.4% In April, Come In Above Estimates

(RTTNews) - After reporting a steep drop in U.S. new home sales in the previous month, the Commerce Department released a report on Friday showing that new home sales rebounded strongly in the month of April and came in above economist estimates.

The Commerce Department said new home sales jumped 6.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 433,000 in April from the revised March rate of 407,000. Economists had expected new home sales to climb to a rate of 420,000.

The revised rate for March reflects a substantial upward revision from the 384,000 originally reported, although it still represents a six-month low.

Peter Boockvar, managing director at the Lindsey Group, said, "Bottom line, new home sales have basically been hovering around the 400-450k range since January of last year and remain almost 70% below the peak seen in 2005."

"Even with the hoped for spring bounce back, new home sales in the March/April spring selling season are below the March/April 2013 pace," he added.

The Commerce Department noted that the annual rate of new home sales in April was down by 4.2 percent compared to the same month a year ago.

The report also showed that the median sales price of new houses sold in April was $275,800 down 2.1 percent from $281,700 in March and down 1.3 percent from $279,300 in April of 2013.

Meanwhile, the estimate of new houses for sale at the end of April was 192,000, up from 191,000 at the end of the previous month.

The inventory of new homes represents 5.3 months of supply at the current sales rate compared to 5.6 months of supply in March.

On Thursday, the National Association of Realtor released a separate report showing that existing home sales rebounded in April but came in below economist estimates.

NAR said existing home sales rose 1.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.65 million in April from 4.59 million in March. Economists had been expecting existing home sales to climb to an annual rate of 4.69 million.