New home sales in the United States ended the year of 2018 with a low annual increase, as housing affordability concerns kept bothering homebuyers, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) said on Tuesday.
After a long delay due to the partial government shutdown, Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Census Bureau finally announced that sales of newly built, single-family homes posted a yearly gain of 1.5 percent in 2018.
According to historical data released by the Census Bureau, the yearly increase of sales was over 9 percent at the end of 2017 and nearly 12 percent at the end of 2016.
NAHB experts said that problems in housing affordability caused the slow growth in sales. According to the data from the Census Bureau, the average sales price across the United States in December, 2018, was 377,000 dollars.
"While the December sales pace improved on a monthly basis, the current rate of sales remains off the post-Great Recession trend due to housing affordability concerns made worse by the rise in mortgage interest rates at the end of the year," said Robert Dietz, chief economist of NAHB.
The U.S. Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, commonly known as Freddie Mac, released its latest mortgage rates report on Thursday, saying that 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) in the United States remained flat at 4.35 percent for the week ending Feb. 28.
"We expect lower mortgage rates in the early months of 2019 will lead to additional new home demand," Dietz said.
"Housing affordability remains a challenge across the country, but conditions have improved in early 2019, as illustrated by the recent uptick in builder confidence." said Greg Ugalde, chairman of NAHB.
