Yahoo! News - New Home Sales Jump 9.4 Pct in August
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. new home sales jumped a surprising 9.4 percent in August, the fastest acceleration of sales in almost four years, as a fresh dip in mortgage interest rates attracted buyers, a government report showed on Monday. Sales of new single-family homes climbed to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.184 million units from a downwardly revised 1.082 million units the month before, the Commerce Department (news - web sites) said. It was the sharpest climb since December 2000.
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This is pretty impressive. As the story notes, given the storms in Florida nobody really expected such strong figures.