U.S. home sales nosedive in November

Special Report:Global Financial Crisis

CHICAGO, Dec. 23 (Chinese media) -- U.S. existing-home and new home sales dropped sharply in November, according to a report of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released Tuesday.

Existing-home sales including single-family, town homes, condominiums and co-ops fell 8.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.49 million units in November, from a downwardly revised level of 4.91 million in October, and are 10.6 percent below the 5.02-million-unit pace in November 2007.

Among them, existing single-family home sales fell 8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.02 million, from a level of4.37 million in October, and are 8.8 percent below a 4.41-million-unit pace a year ago.

Sales of new single-family houses in November were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 407,000, according to estimates released jointly Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This was 2.9 percent below the revised October of 419,000 and 35.3 percent below the November 2007 estimate of 629,000.

"The quickly deteriorating conditions in the job market, stock market, and consumer confidence in October and November have knocked down home sales to another level. We hope the home sales impact from the stock market crash turns out to be short-lived, as was the case in 1987 and 2001," said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist.