New Home Sales Drop

The ""U.S. Census Bureau"":http://www.census.gov/ and ""HUD"":http://portal.hud.gov/portal/page/portal/HUD released data Thursday indicating southerly drifts for sales of new single-family homes, adding to the deluge of reports that cast the housing markets in the shadow of an uncertain recovery.

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The data revealed a 2.1 percent drop beneath the April rate of 326,000, 13.5 percent above the 281,000 estimates from May 2010. Meanwhile, median sales prices for May home purchases fell to $222,600, with the average rate appearing at $266,400.

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Home sales activity halved in May, reaching levels residential and commercial markets saw at the onset of the recession in 2007. New home supply for the year dropped to 166,000, representing a 3.5 percent decline.

The bad news comes on the heels of several other reports and assessments from industry leaders, indicators, and organizations signaling a downward trend for home sales, prices, and mortgage lending.

""HUD"":http://portal.hud.gov/portal/page/portal/HUD joined with the ""Treasury Department"":http://www.treasury.gov/Pages/default.aspx to release the May housing scorecard, which tracked ""continued signs of weakness"" in the housing markets and called home prices across the spectrum ""weak after seven months decline.""

Following the scorecard, ""John Burns Real Estate Consulting"":http://www.realestateconsulting.com/ published a housing report in June confirming that ""the existing home market continues to remain weak, with most indicators still grading at poor levels and almost all of the indicators we track falling further this month,"" according to the report.

The ""Federal Reserve"":http://www.federalreserve.gov/ strengthened the view on a poorly recovering market by ""releasing"":https://themreport.com/articles/index/fed-residential-real-estate-weak-commercial-market-improving-2011-06-08 the Beige Report this month. The report also documented ""widespread weakness"" in home sales and housing markets, faulting weak job growth and tight credit across the economy.