Sales of newly built homes dropped to their lowest level since the government started tracking the numbers more than four decades ago, with demand for home purchases down in all four regions of the country.
The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that new homes sold in July at an annual rate of 276,000, down 12.4 percent from June and down 32.4 percent compared with the same time last year.
The economy is backsliding a little bit. While it's too soon to tell if that's going to result in another recession, it seems clear that consumers are holding back on committing to major purchases, such as buying a home.
The drop was led by the Northeast, where new home sales fell nearly 35 percent. Sales declined 25.5 percent in the Midwest, 15.1 percent in the South and 9.8 percent in the West.
The underlying demand is extremely weak, despite rock-bottom mortgage interest rates.
The poor new-home sales results follow another damaging report on the existing-home sales. Those sales fell in July to their lowest level in more than a decade to an annual rate of 3.83 million, down 27.2 percent from June's pace.
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