New Home Sales Hit Record Low In January

WASHINGTON — Sales of new homes plunged to a record low in January, underscoring the formidable challenges facing the housing industry as it tries to recover from the worst slump in decades.

…Purchases of new single-family homes dropped 11.2 percent in January from December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 309,000, the Commerce Department reported. Sales fell in every region of the country except the Midwest, and the raw number of new homes on the market rose for the first time in nearly three years.

“No sugar-coating these numbers,” said Mike Larson, an analyst at Weiss Research, wrote in a note to clients. “They stink.”

The figures are the latest in a string of mixed indicators about the housing market’s health, and renew questions about whether the federal government should follow through on its plans to end major initiatives designed to help stimulate sales. Those include a program that helped pull down interest rates and a tax credit for first-time buyers and others.

Sales of new homes are generally dwarfed by activity in the existing homes market, which historically has made up at least three-quarters of all home sales. But new-home sales are closely tracked because the…

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New Home Sales Hit Record Low In January

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