June New Residential Single Family Home Sales increased 8.3% to 497,000 in annualized sales.  This change is well within the statistical error margin of ±20.5%.   New Single Family Housing inventory is at a 3.9 month supply low.  New single family home sales are now 38.1% above June 2012 levels, but this figure has a ±22.0% margin of error.   A year ago new home annualized sales were 360,000.  Sales figures are annualized and represent what the yearly volume would be if just that month's rate were applied to the entire year.   These figures are seasonally adjusted as well.  Beware of taking these monthly percentage changes in new home sales to heart, for most months the change in sales is inside the statistical margin of error and will be revised significantly in the upcoming months.

The average home sale price was $295,000, a -4.0% decline from last month's average price of $307,400.   These prices are still clearly outside the range of what most wages can afford.  From June 2012, the average home sale price has increased 18.5%.

June's median new home price also declined by -5.3% to $249,700.  From June 2012, the median new home sales price has also increased by 7.4%. Median means half of new homes were sold below this price and both the average and median sales price for single family homes is not seasonally adjusted.

Inventories:   New homes available for sale increased 1.3% from last month to 161,000.  This is a 11.0% increase from a year ago.

Below is a graph of the months it would take to sell the new homes on the market at each month's sales rate, currently at 3.9 months  We can see these inventories vs. sales times have plunged.  The supply of new homes at current sales rates declined 7.1% from May

The median time a house was completed and on the market for sale to the time it sold was 3.9 months.  The media time a house was completed and then sold has also plunged.  The median time a home was on the market in June 2012 was 5.8 months.

The variance in monthly housing sales statistics is so large, in part, due to the actual low volume overall, along with the fact this is a survey.  One needs to look at least a quarter to get a real feel for new home sales, but a year of sales data is more in order.  Additionally this report, due to it's huge margin of error, is almost always revised significantly the next month.   Buyer beware on month to month comparisons and reacting to primarily figures and why we graph up the statistics so one can identify a real trend versus press headline buzz.

What we know for certain about new homes sales are increasing and the costs are skyrocketing from the year ago change.  We also know inventories have plunged.  New single family home prices becoming out of reach for most families by income once again.  This is not a healthy housing market to simply return to new home prices people cannot afford and is one of the reasons subprime started in earnest a decade ago.  We list the margins of error for they are usually above the monthly reported percentage changes. The Census notes that the average revision is about 5% of the original reported.

Here is our overviews of residential real estate statistics, only some graphs revised.