U.S. New Home Sales Jump To Five-Year High In June

(RTTNews) - New home sales in the U.S. rose by much more than anticipated in the month of June, according to a report released by the Commerce Department on Wednesday, although the report also showed downward revisions to the data for the past few months.

The report said new home sales surged up by 8.3 percent to an annual rate of 497,000 in June from the revised May rate of 459,000.

Economists had expected new home sales to climb to an annual rate of 481,000 from the 476,000 originally reported for the previous month.

In addition to the downward revision to new home sales in May, the annual rate of new home sales in April was downwardly revised to 453,000 from 466,000.

"New home sales are volatile and monthly changes are hardly ever statistically significant," said Teunis Brosens, Senior Economist at ING Bank. "Still, today's release confirms that new home sales remain on an upward trend."

With the continued upward trend, new home sales in June were at their highest annual since May of 2008. Sales were also up by 38.1 percent compared to the same month a year ago.

Meanwhile, the report said the median sales price of new houses was $249,700 in June, down 5 percent from $262,800 in May. The median price was still up 7.4 percent year-over-year.

The Commerce Department also said there were 161,000 houses for sale at the end of June compared to 159,000 at the end of May.

The number of houses for sale represents 3.9 months of supply at the current sales rate, down from 4.2 months due to the faster rate of sales.

The report showed a notable increase in new home sales in the Northeast, where sales surged up by 18.5 percent in June.

New home sales in the West and the South also jumped by 13.8 percent and 10.9 percent, respectively, while sales in the Midwest slumped by 11.8 percent.

On Monday, the National Association of Realtors released a separate report showing an unexpected decrease in existing home sales in June.

NAR said existing home sales dipped 1.2 percent to an annual rate of 5.08 million in June from a downwardly revised 5.14 million in May.

The drop surprised economists, who had expected existing home sales to climb to 5.27 million from the 5.18 million originally reported for the previous month.