This morning's release of the December New Home Sales from the Census Bureau came in at 842K, up 1.6% month-over-month from a revised 829K in November. The Investing.com forecast was for 865K.

Here is the opening from the report:

New Home Sales
Sales of new single-family houses in December 2020 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 842,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 1.6 percent (±15.8 percent)* above the revised November rate of 829,000 and is 15.2 percent (±17.2 percent)* above the December 2019 estimate of 731,000.\

An estimated 811,000 new homes were sold in 2020. This is 18.8 percent (±4.3 percent) above the 2019 figure of 683,000.

Sales Price
The median sales price of new houses sold in December 2020 was $355,900. The average sales price was $394,900. [Full Report]

For a longer-term perspective, here is a snapshot of the data series, which is produced in conjunction with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The data since January 1963 is available in the St. Louis Fed's FRED repository here. We've included a six-month moving average to highlight the trend in this highly volatile series.

Over this time frame, we see the steady rise in new home sales following the 1990 recession and the acceleration in sales during the real estate bubble that peaked in 2005.

The Population-Adjusted Reality

Now let's examine the data with a simple population adjustment. The Census Bureau's mid-month population estimates show a 75.9% increase in the US population since 1963. Here is a chart of new home sales as a percent of the population.

New single-family home sales are 42.5% above the 1963 start of this data series. The population-adjusted version is 19.0% below the first 1963 sales and at a level similar to the lows we saw during the double-dip recession in the early 1980s, a time when 30-year mortgage rates peaked at 18.63%. Today's 30-year rate is 2.74%.

For another perspective, here is a chart of the median new home sale prices back to 1963, inflation-adjusted. The data source is also the Census Bureau and can be found on the press release and website above. For inflation adjustment, we use the CPI-U, which is the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers. We've included a 6-month moving average for this extremely volatile metric to give us a clearer sense of the trend.

Here's a zoomed-in look since 2000.