New Home Sales Crawl Forward by 1.6%

New single-family home sales offered to end the year on a hopeful note by crawling forward by 1.6 percent in November, arriving at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 315,000 units.

[IMAGE] [COLUMN_BREAK]

The ""Commerce Department"":http://www.commerce.gov/ reported the data via the Census Bureau, which releases new-home sales numbers on a monthly basis.

New home sales arrived at a median sales price of $214,000 in November, while the average sales price came closer to $242,900, according to the agency.

New homes for sale by the end of November meanwhile closed at 158,000.

The numbers help close a year for otherwise dismal new-home sales, in spite of a rush by mortgage rates to unheard-of record lows.

""Freddie Mac"":http://www.freddiemac.com/ helped end 2011 by fielding interest rates that fell to 3.91 percent for the benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.