The survey also showed that May’s home sales were revised significantly downward, to 517,000, from 546,000. What a difference a survey group makes as this report is from the Census while existing home sales is published by NAR.
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The revision to the May rate subtracted 17,000 from the month’s total. These figures are also seasonally adjusted.
Regionally, home sales rose by 28% in the Northeast.
The median sales price has slipped 1.8 per cent to $281,800 over the past 12 months.
A report on Wednesday showed home resales jumped to a more than eight-year high in June.
Home builders, themselves, are upbeat on sales of new single-family homes, with a gauge of their confidence this month at the strongest reading in nearly a decade. Sale prices for newly constructed homes were as high as $302,700 in November 2014. From a year ago inventories have increased 8.6% and this is outside the ±5.8% margin of error. That was up from 4.8 months in May.
“Nevertheless, a more subdued pace of recovery is still a recovery and, coupled with continued improvement in existing home sales, housing remains a point of particular strength relative to the still-lackluster activity levels in other sectors of the economy such as household spending and business investment”.
“Manufacturing has been stuck in a lower gear in recent months compared to the strong expansion seen through much of last year, linked to weak exports and uncertainty about the economic outlook at home and overseas”, he said.
The median time a house was completed and on the market to the time it sold was 4.0 months. Ten of the 43 counties that C.A.R. reported showed month-to-month decreases in their distressed sales shares, with Alameda and Santa Clara having the smallest share of distressed sales at 1 percent, followed by San Mateo (2 percent), Contra Costa (3 percent), and San Francisco (3 percent).
Sales of new properties, which are counted when contracts are signed, are considered a more timely measure of the market than previously owned dwellings, which are counted when a purchase is finalized.
“Today we got a triple Whammy of bad news in terms of homes sales”. That said, rents are soaring as well.
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For the one in three homes that sold over asking price, the premium paid over asking price increased in June, suggesting increased market competition among home buyers in some local markets.
