The Department of Housing and Urban Development [1] (HUD), in conjunction with the U.S. Census Bureau [2] released its report on New Residential Sales [3] for October 2017 on Monday.
The sales figures were seasonally adjusted and came to an estimated 685,000, an increase of 6.2 percent (plus or minus 18.0 percent) from September’s revised rate of 645,000, and an 18.7 percent increase (plus or minus 23.5 percent) of October’s estimate a year prior, which totaled 577,000.
New houses sold in October had an average price of $400,200; the median sales price came to $312,800. The report also figures that, at the end of October on a seasonally adjusted level, there are currently 282,000 new houses on the market. If the rate of sales of new homes continues, there will be a total supply lasting 4.9 months.
According to the report, it’s important to note that these figures are estimated from sample surveys. Therefore, numbers are subject to sampling variability as well as non-sampling error including bias and variance from response, nonreporting, and undercoverage.
Estimated average relative standard errors of the preliminary data are shown in the tables of the full report, here [4].
Explanations of confidence intervals and sampling variability can be found at the Census Bureau’s website [5].
The next joint report of New Residential Sales for November 2017 will be released on December 22, 2017.