U.S. new home sales fall 7.3% in May
New single-family home sales fell 7.3% in May to a 580,000 SAAR, missing forecasts of 638,000 and down 6.8% year-over-year.
The Census Bureau reported that new single-family home sales in the United States declined 7.3% in May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 580,000, down from April’s 626,000. The May reading missed the consensus forecast of 638,000 and was 6.8% lower than the same month a year earlier.
The figure is expressed as a seasonally adjusted annual rate, which projects the pace of sales over a year. The monthly release included six-month moving averages and trend charts to reduce short-term volatility in the series.
Freddie Mac’s primary mortgage survey showed the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 6.44% in May 2026, the highest level since last August.
The median sales price for a new single-family home rose to $424,900 in May, a 2.0% increase from April and essentially unchanged from a year earlier. After adjusting for inflation using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, the real median price increased 1.4% from the prior month and declined 4.1% versus May of last year.
A longer-term, population-adjusted view shows a different scale for the series. Using Census mid-month population estimates, the U.S. population has increased 82.2% since 1963. When new single-family home sales are expressed as a percentage of the population, the series is down 46.1% from the 1963 start of the data. The population-adjusted rate peaked at 0.47% in July 2005 and hit a low of 0.09% in February 2011. In raw terms, current new single-family home sales are 1.9% below the initial 1963 level.
Charts included with the release trace the series back to 1963 and show a closer view from 1990. The longer series highlights a rise after the early-1990s recession, a sharp acceleration through the mid-2000s housing bubble that peaked in 2005, a trough around 2011, a recovery that peaked near the end of 2020, and a pullback for about two years after that. Sales rose at the start of 2023 and have been largely flat over the past couple of years.
The report referenced related housing measures and investment products tied to residential real estate and homebuilders, including exchange-traded funds such as REZ, PKB, ITB and XHB. It listed additional indicators tracked alongside new-home sales: the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, the FHFA House Price Index, the NAHB Housing Market Index, existing home sales, housing starts, building permits and pending home sales.
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