Home Sales Soar in March
WASHINGTON D.C. (
) -- Sales of new single-family houses in March spiked 27%, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 411,000, the second-consecutive day of positive new from the U.S. housing market.
On Thursday, the existing home sales report for March showed a spike of more than 6%.
The positive turns in the sale of homes was not surprising, given the home buyer tax credit scheduled to end in April, and more buyers coming back into the market as the slow winter season ended.
Even with positive expectations coming into Thursday and Friday's housing market data, the extent of the new home sales improvement was huge -- the largest one-month gain since 1963, the Commerce Department said.
The 27% rise was a 21% gain over the February level of home sales, and close to a 24% gain versus March 2009 new home sales.
At the March sales pace, it would take 6.7 months to sell off the existing inventory of new homes, representing the lowest monthly inventory since December 2006.
The median sales price of new houses sold in March 2010 was $214,000.
Shares of homebuilders
D.R. Horton
(DHI) - Get Report
,
Lennar
(LEN) - Get Report
,
KB Home
(KBH) - Get Report
and
Pulte Group
(PHM) - Get Report
began rallying on Wednesday ahead of the housing market reports. The homebuilder rally gained steam on Friday morning with the huge increase in the new home sales in March, with Lennar and Pulte leading gains up by 8%.
-- Reported by Eric Rosenbaum in New York.
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