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发帖数: 29846 | 1 WASHINGTON – Sales of new U.S. homes fell to a six-month low in August. The
fourth straight monthly decline during the peak buying season suggests the
housing market is years away from a recovery.
By Chris Carlson, AP
The Commerce Department said Monday that new-home sales fell 2.3% to a
seasonally adjusted annual rate of 295,000. That's less than half the
roughly 700,000 that economists say must be sold to sustain a healthy
housing market.
New-homes sales are on pace for the worst year since the government began
keeping records a half century ago.
High unemployment, larger required down payments and tougher lending
standards are preventing many people from buying homes. Plunging stocks and
a growing fear that the U.S. could tip back into another recession are also
keeping people from entering the housing market.
Pierre Ellis, an analyst at Decision Economics, said that until wages
increase and hiring picks up, home sales will languish.
The "bad news is the evident absence of optimism that sales will pick up to
any degree," Ellis said.
While new homes represent less than one-fifth of the housing market, they
have an outsize impact on the economy. Each home built creates an average of
three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes, according to
the National Association of Home Builders.
Last year was also the fifth straight year that sales have fallen. It
followed five straight years of record highs, when housing was booming.
The median sales price of a new home fell nearly 9 percent to $209,100 —
the lowest price since last October. That suggests builders are slashing
their prices in order to compete with comparably lower-priced previously
occupied homes.
Foreclosures and short sales — when lenders accept less for a house than a
mortgage is worth — are forcing prices down. Those homes are selling at an
average discount of 20%, and they are lowering neighboring home values. That
's made many re-sales a bargain compared with new homes, creating an average
30% disparity in prices.
Many builders have stopped working on projects and are waiting for demand to
pick up. Home construction is down nearly 6% over the past year.
Still, permits, a gauge of future construction, have risen nearly 8 percent
this year. Builders may be preparing to start dormant project once the
economy improves.
Sales were uneven across the U.S. They plunged 13.6% in the Northeast, which
was hit by Hurricane Irene at the end of the month. They also fell 6.3% in
the West and 2.4% in the South. They rose 8.2% in the Midwest.
All home sales remain weak. The August sales pace for previously occupied
homes was 5.03 million. That's slightly above last year's sales, which were
the fewest since 1997. Economists say roughly 6 million older homes need to
be sold each year to sustain a healthy housing market.
Home prices have dropped more since the recession started, on a percentage
basis, than during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It took 19 years for
prices to fully recover after the Depression. |
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