Nearly a million new homes were sold in October, the Census Bureau reported Wednesday, as sales declined, but they remain strong when compared to last year.
During October, 990,000 new homes were sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, which was 41.5% higher from the same month last year but 0.3% lower from September, which saw over a million new homes sold.
One reason prompting the decline is inventory, as there were 40% fewer new homes on the market in October than there were in the same month in 2019.
The lack in inventory has driven prices up, with median prices increasing to $330,000 last month, compared to $322,400 a year ago.
As homes have been gobbled up, their time on the market has shrunk since the beginning of the year. In January, a new home was on the market for an average of over five months. That number is down to roughly three months.
The existing home sale market is also strong.
Existing-home purchases increased for the fifth consecutive month in October as sales were up 4.3% from the prior month and 26.6% from one year ago, the National Association of Realtors reported last week.
The median existing-home price last month was $313,000, almost 16% more than in October 2019, as more than 7 in 10 homes sold in October 2020, 72%, were on the market for less than a month, the NAR reported.
“Considering that we remain in a period of stubbornly high unemployment relative to pre-pandemic levels, the housing sector has performed remarkably well this year,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist.
