New home sales fall 6 percent in June

According to the monthly report on single-family home sales, released today by the United States Census Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, new single family home sales continued to slide last month.

Sales of new single-family homes dropped 6.6 percent in June, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 834,000, compared with a downwardly-revised rate of 893,000 in May.

The June rate is 22.3 percent below the June 2006 new home sales rate of 1.07 million.

Regionally, the month-over-month sales pace grew only in the South, up 7.6 percent to a rate of 493,000 from 458,000 in May. New home sales fell 27.1 percent in the Northeast, 17.1 percent in the Midwest and 22.5 percent in the West.

The seasonally adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of June was 537,000. This represents a supply of 7.8 months at the current sales rate.