US new home sales underwhelmed again in October. The latest data point came in at 458K SAAR versus consensus of 470K. What really caught are eye was the volatile increase in average and median prices. The average sales price spiked by nearly 28% month-over-month, easily to an all-time high for this series. The year-over-year price change went from -2.2% in September to +19.5% in October.
We see a similar phenomenon when we look at median sales price. Median sales price spiked by 16.5% month-over-month in October and is now 14.4% higher year-over-year. It is the first time that the median sales price was over $300,000 and the first time the average sales price was over $400,000.
