New Home Sales Rise in November

From Forbes.com

By Martin Crutsinger 12.27.06

Sales of new homes rose in November while the backlog of unsold homes fell for a fourth straight month, providing hope that the serious slump in housing could be ending.
Sales of new single-family homes rose by 3.4 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.047 million units, reflecting solid sales increases in every region of the country except the South.
The increase was better than had been expected and offered hope that the steep slide in housing may be starting to bottom out as builders, using a wide array of incentives, begin to make a dent in the record level of unsold homes.

The 3.4 percent rebound in sales last month was the third increase in the past four months. It helped to lift the median price for a new home to $251,700, an increase of 3.2 percent from a year ago. The median price is the point where half the homes sold for more and half for less.

The housing industry has undergone a severe slowdown this year following a prolonged boom that had been fueled by the lowest mortgage rates in more than four decades.

This year's slump followed five years in which sales of both new and existing homes had set records.
What some are calling a recession in housing has been a big factor in the economy's overall slowdown, cutting 1.2 percentage points from growth in the July-September quarter, a period when the economy expanded at a lackluster pace of just 2 percent.

Many analysts believe housing is continuing to act as a drag on growth in the current quarter and will continue to depress activity through the early part of 2007.