Sales of new single-family homes ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 684,000 in August, the fastest monthly pace recorded so far in 2026, while the average price of a new house fell 8.8% from a year earlier to $478,700.
The figures come from the New Residential Sales report that the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development released jointly on Sept. 24. The August rate was 6.4% above July’s revised 643,000 and 2.0% below the 698,000 pace of August 2025.
Both of those comparisons come with a caution the Census Bureau prints alongside them. The 90% confidence interval on the monthly change is plus or minus 19.5 percentage points, and on the annual change plus or minus 15.7 points β wide enough that the bureau flags neither move as statistically different from zero. New-home sales is among the noisiest of the monthly housing indicators, and a single month rarely settles an argument about direction.
The price data are firmer. The 8.8% drop in the average sale price, from $525,100 in August 2025, carries a margin of error of 7.7 percentage points and is one of the few figures in the release that clears the bureau’s significance threshold. The average also fell 9.1% from July’s $526,400, though that monthly move is inside the error band.
The median told a milder story: $393,700 in August, up 0.4% from July and down 5.8% from $417,900 a year earlier. When the average falls much faster than the median, the mix is shifting rather than every house getting cheaper β and the Census price tables show exactly that. Homes priced under $300,000 accounted for 22% of August’s sales, up from 18% in August 2025, while houses at $1 million and above fell to 4% of sales from 7%.
Inventory holds while the mix of unsold homes changes
Builders ended August with 483,000 new houses for sale, unchanged from July and 2.0% below the 493,000 on the market a year earlier. At the August sales rate that is a supply of 8.5 months, down from 9.0 months in July and level with a year ago.
The composition of that inventory has shifted over the past year in a way that matters more than the headline count. Completed, standing homes β the ones that cost builders money every month they sit β fell to 113,000 from 123,000 in August 2025. Homes not yet started rose to 114,000 from 96,000. Builders are carrying less finished product and more optionality.
The sales side moved the same direction. At a seasonally adjusted annual rate, 248,000 of August’s sales were homes under construction, up from 201,000 in July, and 83,000 were homes on which work had not begun, up from 66,000. Sales of completed homes fell to 353,000 from 376,000. On our reading, that pattern is consistent with buyers accepting a wait in exchange for the incentives builders are attaching to homes they have not finished β the same incentive push that showed up in September’s builder confidence survey, where two-thirds of builders reported using them.
The standing inventory that remains is aging. The median new home sold in August had been finished for 3.2 months before it found a buyer, against 2.4 months in August 2025, on a not-seasonally-adjusted basis.
A Midwest swing, a Western slide
Regional detail in this release is volatile enough to read with care β the confidence interval on the Midwest’s monthly change is plus or minus 51.2 percentage points β but the direction of the quarter is visible.
Midwest sales nearly doubled to a 98,000 annual rate from 53,000 in July, reversing the collapse that defined July’s report, and stood 22.5% above a year earlier. The South, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of the national total, rose 6.9% to 451,000 and was 3.4% above August 2025. The Northeast fell 36.1% to 23,000, and the West dropped 15.2% to 112,000 β leaving Western sales 26.8% below their year-ago level, the steepest annual decline of the four regions.
Texas, the largest new-home market in the country, moved against the national figure in August. Statewide new-home sales fell 6.9% from July, according to the HomesUSA.com report released Sept. 21, even as houses sold faster.
Cumulatively, the year is still running behind. On an unadjusted basis, 449,600 new homes have sold through August, down 2.9% from 463,200 over the same eight months of 2025.
August’s contracts also predate the Federal Reserve’s latest move. On Sept. 16 the Federal Open Market Committee raised its benchmark rate by a quarter point, to a target range of 3.75% to 4%, saying the action “will support a timelier return to the Committee’s 2 percent goal.” Whether the pickup in August sales survives the borrowing costs that followed is the question the October release will start to answer.
