The new home sales market cooled off last month.New home sales in August slipped 0.3% to 373,000 from 374,000 during the prior month, revised from 372,000. The slip compared to Consensus expectations for 380,000 sales. The shortfall was led by a 4.9% (+11.5% y/y) decline in the South which was the fourth drop in the last five months. Sales in the West ticked up just 0.9% (64.6% y/y). Elsewhere, sales were stronger with the Northeast posting a 20.0% m/m increase and rising by more than one half y/y while sales in the Midwest rose 1.8% (16.7% y/y).

The median price of a new single family home increased 11.2% to $256,900 (17.0% y/y) while prices in prior months were revised higher. The average price gained to $295,300 (13.9% y/y) during August and was its highest since July 2008.

The length of time to sell a new home slipped m/m to 8.3 months in August. The inventory of unsold homes remained near the all time low at 141,000 units (-12.4% y/y). This is a 4.5 month supply at the current sales rate, the lowest since late-2005.

The data in this report are available in Haver's USECON database. The consensus expectation figure is from the Action Economics survey and is available in the AS1REPNA database.