Dive Brief:

• The Commerce Department said Wednesday that sales of new single-family homes jumped by 4.3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 490,000 in November. The median price of $305,000 of new homes sold in November is a 0.8% bump from last year.
• From last November, new-home purchases were up 9.1%. Sales increased 14.5% Jan.-Nov. of 2015 when compared with that 2014 period. Trending down is the pace of new-home sales. That number is averaging 467,000 over the last three months against 517,000 in the first three months of the year.
• The report also said, that at the current sales price, there were 5.7 months of newly constructed homes available for sale in November. That is a small dip from the 5.8-month supply in October.

Dive Insight:

As the year comes to a close, the government and industry analysts remain positive following the ups and downs of each month. 

Last week, Commerce said it has been a solid year and Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said, "demographics would point to considerable upside for residential investment."

A MarketWatch survey of economists had forecast a rate of 505,000, just 15,000 shy of the November rate. But, Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics, wrote that the data continue to show improvement.