The bottom line on new home sales
The picture in 2007, as the Associated Press and Bloomberg report, was fairly bleak for U.S. homebuilders. New home sales fell a record amount:
The Commerce Department reported yesterday that sales of new homes dropped 26.4 percent last year to 774,000. That marked the worst sales year on record, surpassing the old mark of a 23.1 percent plunge in 1980.The government reported that the median price of a new home barely budged last year, edging up a slight 0.2 percent to $246,900, the poorest showing since prices fell 2.4 percent during the 1991 housing downturn.
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Comments
"The 26.4 percent drop in sales for 2007 represented weakness in every part of the country except the Northeast, where sales posted a small 1.6 percent advance."
I'm not sure the bottom line is as informative as the lines above it.
Posted by: Erskine Bowles | January 29, 2008 10:32 AM
Maryland isn't in the Northeast, at least according to the Census Bureau, one of the agencies that releases the home sales numbers. It's in the South.
That's an interesting stat nonetheless.
Posted by: Jamie Smith Hopkins | January 29, 2008 12:57 PM
Why should people buy new houses in the first place? There are loads of overpriced ruins - like here in Baltimore - which start to shine brighter with every realtor's sweet chant. But sure folks, you'd all get rich in a few years, there is still room for prices to grow, and never was better time to buy..........
Posted by: John Williams | January 29, 2008 7:24 PM