Sales of new single-family houses in April 2017 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 569,000, a drop of 11.4% from upwardly revised March, according to estimates released jointly Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Sales remained 0.5% ahead of the pace of April, 2016.
Analysts were expecting a drop more on the order of 1.5%.
The new-home sales estimates are notoriously volatile from month to month, and the decline came after three months of increases, with March having come in at the highest rate since 2007.
The West led the declines with a 26.3% drop to an annual pace of 126,000 sales. In the South, the largest region, sales were off 4% to a pace of 333,000. The Midwest dropped 13.1% to 73,000, and the Northeast lost 7.5% to a pace of 37,000.
The median sales price of new houses sold in April 2017 was $309,200, down from $318,700 in March and $321,300 a year earlier. The average sales price was $368,300, down from $385,400 in March and $380,000 in April, 2016.
The seasonally-adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of April was 268,000. This represents a supply of 5.7 months at the current sales rate.
