New home sales grew slightly in February as mortgage rates cooled

New home sales in February increased from the month before, rising 1.1% last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 640,000, according to a report Thursday from the Census Bureau. The reading follows recent declines in mortgage rates, which could be spurring more home purchases. Still, sales were 19% lower than in February 2022.As of Wednesday evening, the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.

Still, sales are still down by a large margin from the peaks notched in 2020, when the Fed had slashed interest rates to near-zero levels. The housing market is still in what most economists characterize as a recession, and there continues to be fear that the downturn is a harbinger for a broader economywide recession.

Earlier this week, there was some big news in the housing market when existing home prices dropped from February 2022 to last month, marking the first such decline after about 11 years of increases.

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