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HUD: New Home Sales Above Estimates

The Department of Housing and Urban Development, in conjunction with the U.S. Census Bureau released its report on New Residential Sales for May 2017 on Friday.  The sales figures were seasonally adjusted and came to an estimated 610,000, an increase of 2.9 percent (plus or minus 13.0 percent) from April’s revised rate of 593,000, and an 8.9 percent increase (plus or minus 21.9 percent) of May’s estimate a year prior, which totaled 560,000.

New houses sold in may had an average price of $406,400; the median sales price came to $345,800. The HUD also figures that, at the end of May on a seasonally adjusted level, there are currently 268,000 new houses on the market. If the rate of sales of new homes continues, there will be a total supply lasting 5.3 months.

It’s important to note that these figures are constantly being revised. In the May report, seasonally adjusted estimates of houses sold, houses for sale, and the supply of houses for January 2015 through March 2017 were revised. There also is a margin for error, as stated in the explanatory notes:

“In interpreting changes in the statistics in this release, note that month-to-month changes in seasonally adjusted statistics often show movements which may be irregular. It may take three months to establish an underlying trend for building permit authorizations, six months for total starts, and six months for total completions. The statistics in this release are estimated from sample surveys and are subject to sampling variability as well as nonsampling error including bias and variance from response, nonreporting, and undercoverage.”

Explanations of confidence intervals and sampling variability can be found at the Census Bureau’s website. The next joint report of New Residential Sales for June 2017 will be released on Wednesday, July 26, 2017.

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