The Washington Post argues that sales numbers for newly-built homes aren’t “as dazzling as they seem when put in context.”
Even though new home sales jumped 18 percent last month from July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 504,000, The Washington Post reports that the number is still far below home sales from 2000 to 2003, where they would reach 960,000 a year on average. Percentage gains are also less impressive in terms of year-to-date sales – at 306,000, sales made in the first eight months of this year account for only a 2-percent increase compared to the same period a year earlier.
