U. S. real estate market growing for 3 month in a row
2023.01.26 11:50
U. S. real estate market growing for 3 month in a row
By Kristina Sobol
Budrigannews.com – As mortgage rates continued to fall in December, sales of new single-family homes in the United States increased for a third consecutive month, providing hope that the struggling housing market was beginning to stabilize.
The Commerce Department reported on Thursday that sales of new homes increased by 2.3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 616,000 units in the previous month. The previously reported 640,000 units sold in November were revised down to 602,000.
The Midwest and South, generally regarded as affordable regions, saw an increase in sales. They broke off in the West and Northeast. Reuters polled economists and predicted that new home sales, which make up a small portion of home sales in the United States, would fall to 617,000 units. In December, year-over-year sales decreased by 26.6%. In 2022, they decreased by 16.4%.
The housing market has entered a recession as a result of the Federal Reserve’s most rapid rate hike cycle since the 1980s. However, the hope that the housing market could soon stabilize, albeit at a depressed level, has been raised by falling mortgage rates.
According to information provided by the mortgage finance agency Freddie Mac (OTC:), the 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell to an average of 6.15 percent last week, marking the lowest level since the middle of September.
The rate has decreased from an average of 7.08 percent early in the fourth quarter, which was the highest it had been since 2002, and it was 6.33 percent the week before. But it’s still a lot higher than the 3.56 percent average from the same time last year.
In December, the median price of a new home was $442,100, a 7.8% increase from a year earlier. At the end of November, there were 461,000 new homes on the market, the same as in November. A total of 21.5 percent of the inventory was made up of homes that had not yet been built, while construction homes made up 63.1%.
The long-term average of 27% was well below the 15.4% of inventory that was made up of completed homes. It would take 9.0 months to sell all of the houses on the market at the pace of sales in December, down from 9.2 months in November.
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