U.S. Home Sales Reach Record Pace

Americans bought homes at a record annual pace in September as low mortgage rates helped extend a housing boom that has lasted three years, figures showed Monday.

Existing-home sales unexpectedly rose 3.6% to a record annual rate of 6.69 million, the National Assn. of Realtors said. New single-family homes sold at a 1.15-million pace, down 0.2% from August, the Commerce Department said. The combined rate was a record 7.84 million.

In California, real estate activity was robust but showed signs of a long-expected slowing. The state median sales price of an existing detached home in September was $380,040, down 5% from the previous month but up 17.9% on a year-over-year basis, according to the California Assn. of Realtors.

Sales of existing detached homes in September slipped 2.1% from August to a seasonally adjusted, annual rate of 631,880. Still, sales were up 28% from the same month last year.

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate in September of 6.15% was about the same as a year earlier and was almost 2 percentage points lower than the 8.12% average for the 1990s, keeping home buying attractive.

Nationally, the median price of a previously owned home in September was $172,300, up 9.1% from a year earlier. Compared with August, the median price fell 2.8%. The median price of a new home last month was $187,400, down from August and up 5.6% from a year earlier, Commerce Department figures showed.

“We’ve seen a slowdown at the high end, and that’s being reflected in the median price mix,” said Karl Case, a Wellesley College economist and visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. “If you look at repeat sales in the other segments of the market, we are still seeing prices rise.”

September’s combined annual sales rate for new and existing homes puts 2003 on pace for the third straight record year after sales of 6.54 million houses last year and 6.21 million in 2001.

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Bloomberg News was used in compiling this report.