New Home Sales Up 13.8%

New-home sales rebounded 13.8% in March and exhibited new strength despite rising mortgage rates and growing inventories of unsold homes. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that the sales of new single-family homes jumped from a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.07 million in February to 1.21 million in March. Sales numbers for January and February were revised downward. “Thank God we got the rebound,” said David Seiders, chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders. “It will quell some gathering thinking about whether or not the housing market is in the process of collapsing.” The NAHB economist said the housing market is now in a “reasonably orderly slowing-down process” and that at the end of this year new-home sales should be down 11% from last year’s record pace. The Census Bureau report shows first-quarter sales off 8.2% from those of the first quarter of 2005.