This April 16, 2020 photo shows a real estate company sign that marks a home for sale in Harmony, Pa. U.S. new home sales plunged 15.4% in March as the lockdowns that began in the middle of the month began to rattle the housing market. The Commerce Department reported Thursday, April 23, that sales of new single-family homes dropped to a seasonally ajdjusted annual rate of 627,000 last month after sales had fallen 4.6% in February. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
By Martin Crutsinger
Updated 12:04 pm ET
Sales of new homes rose a surprisingly strong 16.6 percent in May with the reopening of major parts of the country potentially fueling activity in the housing market.
The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that sales of new single-family homes rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 676,000 last month.
That was a much better performance than expected. Many economists had forecast that sales would fall in May.
The new home sales numbers come just one day after the U.S. reported a 9.7 percent plunge in May sales of existing homes to an annual rate of 3.91 million, the slowest pace in nearly a decade.
There are hopes that the housing slump that occurred with the virus shutdowns could be coming to an end, though the millions of jobs lost to the pandemic could impede any rebound.
Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist with Oxford Economics, said she expected a modest recovery in sales in the coming months following the big declines in the first quarter but she still expects a decline overall this year.
"The slow recovery in the labor market will limit the upside of any rebound in the housing market," she said.
The median price of a new home rose 4.9 percent to $317,900 in May after falling by 8.7 percent in April, a drop that was attributed to heavy discounting by builders in the midst of the coronavirus shutdowns.
The big sales rebound left activity in May 12.7 percent higher than a year ago.
CES 2024 starts this week in Las Vegas. It's set to feature swaths of the latest advances and gadgets across personal tech, transportation, health care, sustainability and more. Here's a list of the coolest announcements so far.
Astronauts will have to wait until next year before flying to the moon and another few years before landing on it. NASA on Tuesday announced the latest round of delays in its Artemis moon-landing program.
The Biden administration has enacted a new labor rule that aims to prevent the misclassification of workers as independent contractors. The labor department rule going into effect Tuesday replaces a scrapped Trump-era standard that lowered the bar for classifying employees as contractors
The KC-46 was to be the ideal candidate for a fixed-price development program. Instead, it has cost Boeing billions, and made industry wary of such deals.
Dave Long, CEO and Co-Founder of Orangetheory Fitness joins Cheddar to chat trends in the industry for 2024. He updates us on the company's plans to expand and what the state of the economy has meant for business.
One of the world's largest renewable energy developers will be getting hundreds of wind turbines from General Electric spinoff GE Vernova as part of a record equipment order and long-term service deal.
A moon landing attempt by a private US company appears doomed because of a fuel leak on the newly launched spacecraft. Astrobotic Technology managed to orient the lander toward the sun Monday so its solar panel could capture sunlight and charge its onboard battery.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has announced that 100,000 businesses have signed up for a new database that collects ownership information intended to help unmask shell company owners. Yellen says the database will send the message that “the United States is not a haven for dirty money.”
