New Home Sales: Range Bound Activity in February
Summary
- A Respectable pace of new home sales...
- ...but only a modest counter to soft sales in the existing home market.
Sales of new homes rose 1.8% in February, a solid increase on a month-to-month basis, but one that had little influence on the recent trend. The ups and downs of the past two years have traced a sideways path, with the February total of 676 thousand homes (annual rate) nearly identical to the average of 675 thousand in the prior two years.
Results for new home sales in the past two years have been light relative to the burst triggered by low interest rates from mid-2020 to early 2022, and they are well shy of the exuberance seen in the years before the housing-related recession in 2008-09. Otherwise, sales compare favorably with historical norms.
While sales of new homes can be viewed as respectable, more might have been expected given conditions in the market for existing homes. Sales of existing homes have been light in the past two years because of the effects of high interest rates on potential sellers. Many households that might be interested in moving have remained on the sidelines rather than surrender a low-rate mortgage. With a lack of supply, sales of existing homes have been depressed.
The market for new homes is not supply constrained, as the months’ supply is in the upper portion of its historical range. One might expect potential buyers to shift to the new home market given the limited availability in the existing market. However, a slow pace of total sales (new + existing) suggests that the housing market overall is in the doldrums. High interest rates apparently have triggered affordability issues for many buyers.
Despite slow sales, housing prices have not done much to counter affordability issues. The average and median prices of new homes are now drifting lower, but the change has been modest relative to the surge in prices from 2020 to 2022. More notable, the median price of existing homes has continued to move higher, and various indexes of home prices continue to show upward pressure – lighter than it was two to four years ago, but still upward.
New home sales are recorded when the sales contract is signed. New home sales activity and prices are available in Haver's USECON database. The consensus expectation figure from Action Economics is available in the AS1REPNA database.
Michael J. Moran
AuthorMore in Author Profile »Before joining Haver Analytics in 2025, Michael J. Moran was the chief economist of Daiwa Capital Markets America Inc. He was responsible for preparing the firm’s economic forecast and interest rate outlook. He traveled frequently to visit the clients of Daiwa Capital Markets and wrote weekly economic commentary. Mr. Moran also was involved in the flux of financial markets, as he spent a portion of each day on Daiwa’s trading floor interpreting economic statistics and Federal Reserve activity for traders and salespeople. Mr. Moran is quoted frequently in the financial press, and he appears regularly on cable news shows. He also has published articles in several journals and periodicals. Before joining Daiwa Capital Markets America, Mr. Moran worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. where he analyzed a broad range of issues dealing with the financial sector of the economy and regularly briefed the Board of Governors. He was on the faculty of Pennsylvania State University from 1979 to 1980 and taught on a part-time basis at George Washington University from 1980 to 1987.
Mr. Moran received his Ph.D. in economics from Pennsylvania State University in 1980 and a B.S. in business administration from the University of Bridgeport in 1975. He was a CFA charter holder from 2002 until 2016.
More Economy in Brief
Global