The government estimates that 19,000 new single-family homes were sold in February, the lowest figure for any month since the figures began to be compiled in 1963, according to an article in The New York Times by Floyd Norris.

"At a seasonally adjusted annual rate, that works out to an annual pace of 250,000. That, too, is the lowest ever. February can, of course, be explained away by bad weather. But this is also the lowest 12 months ever, with sales of 349,000 new homes," the article said.

"Sales of existing homes," the article continued, "are not robust, but they have stabilized. Mortgages are more available now than they were a year ago, particularly for so-called "conforming mortgages." But there is an oversupply of housing in many areas, and the home construction business seems unlikely to recover for a long time."

"Last spring," the article said, "there was a small revival in sales of new homes. We knew then that it was brought on by a temporary tax credit for buyers, and when sales fell off in the summer we could explain that as an equally temporary phenomenon, the result of sales being brought forward by the credit. Now those temporary effects should have gone away. Instead, sales get worse and worse."

"Next fall, on Oct. 1," the article continued, "the conforming loan limits for Fannie and Freddie will decline. Now they will guarantee mortgages up to $729,750 in some high-cost areas. Unless Congress acts - and the Obama administration says it should not - the limit will fall to a maximum of $625,500. A vast majority of new homes being sold now are below those levels, anyway, so perhaps that won't matter that much. But it won't help."

"The bottom line is that we are experiencing something not seen before - a complete disconnect between sales rates of new and existing homes," the article concluded.

"A new home, the dream of many would-be buyers, makes less and less financial sense in many places," according to an Associated Press article yesterday by Derek Kravitz.

"A wave of foreclosures," the article continued, "has driven down the cost of previously occupied homes and made them even more of a comparative bargain. By contrast, new homes have become more expensive. The median price of a new home in the United States is now 48 percent higher than that of a home being resold, more than three times the gap in a healthy housing market."

"The median price of a new home - the price at which half the homes sell for more and half sell for less - has risen almost 6 percent in the past year to $230,600," the article noted, "even though last year was the worst for sales in nearly a half-century."

"By contrast," the article continued, "sales of previously occupied homes have fallen almost 3 percent in the past year. Prices have dropped more than 5 percent. In February, the median price for a resale was $156,100, according to the National Association of Realtors. That adds up to a price difference of $74,500, or 48 percent, the highest markup in at least a decade. In healthier markets, a new home typically runs about 15 percent more, according to government data."