What are the latest housing sales numbers?
The volume of home sales — that is the number of transactions — is an important barometer of how well the housing market is doing. These numbers are “seasonally adjusted” — because normally people with kids buy in the spring and summer to get set up for a new school year, so the statisticians take that into account when they release the numbers month-by-month.
The most recently released annual rate was 526,000 — bear in mind that this is one-family houses only, so it doesn’t count apartments or two-family homes like the one you might be eyeing in Brooklyn.
Still, that’s the lowest monthly rate since 1991. The Times story on it is here and a pdf of the underlying data can be found by clicking “New Residential Sales” here