Sales of new homes fell last year by 26 percent, the steepest drop since records began in 1963, the Commerce Department said on Monday.Last week, the National Association of Realtors reported that sales of previously owned single-family homes, a large portion of the overall housing market, suffered their biggest annual drop in 25 years.
Prices have also fallen sharply. In December, the median price of a new home fell to $219,200, down 10 percent from December 2006.
For the year, the median price of new homes rose just 0.2 percent, to $246,900. But the median price of a previously owned single-family home fell for the first time in at least four decades, the National Association of Realtors said.
Last month alone, sales of new homes tumbled 4.7 percent, to a 604,000 annual rate, the smallest monthly sales figure since February 1995.
“No matter which way you look at it, the December new home sales report is simply awful,” wrote Dimitry Fleming, an economist at ING Bank.
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