The Commerce Department yesterday said that buyers bought the fewest new homes last year in records going back 47 years.
The Associated Press reported that sales for all of 2010 wee 321,000, a drop of 14.4 percent from 2009 and the fifth consecutive year that sales declined after reaching record highs for the five previous years.
The article said that 2010 ended on a stronger note as buyers purchased new homes at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 329,000 units in December, a 17.5 percent increase from the rate in November.
Still, the article continued, economists say it could be years before sales rise to a healthy rate of 600,000 a year. Ian C. Shepherdson, the chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics, said that "new-home sales are bouncing around the bottom and we see no clear upward trend in the data yet."
Home prices fell in November in 19 of 20 major cities measured by the Standard & Poor's/Case-Schiller Index, according to a report issued Tuesday, and nine of those cities fell to their lowest point since the housing bust, the article said, adding that economists expect prices to keep falling through the first six months of this year.
The Associated Press reported that sales for all of 2010 wee 321,000, a drop of 14.4 percent from 2009 and the fifth consecutive year that sales declined after reaching record highs for the five previous years.
The article said that 2010 ended on a stronger note as buyers purchased new homes at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 329,000 units in December, a 17.5 percent increase from the rate in November.
Still, the article continued, economists say it could be years before sales rise to a healthy rate of 600,000 a year. Ian C. Shepherdson, the chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics, said that "new-home sales are bouncing around the bottom and we see no clear upward trend in the data yet."
Home prices fell in November in 19 of 20 major cities measured by the Standard & Poor's/Case-Schiller Index, according to a report issued Tuesday, and nine of those cities fell to their lowest point since the housing bust, the article said, adding that economists expect prices to keep falling through the first six months of this year.
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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