California new home sales in November down by 55% from last year

The monthly CBIA/HWMI report on new home sales for November is out today, and it's more of the same: down by 55% from November of 2006 and by 10% from October of 2007. Meanwhile, median prices fell by 7% over the last year but were up by 2% from the previous month to $410,990. According to the press release:

Jonathan Dienhart, Director of Published Research for HWMI, said the housing market appears to have a tough road ahead.

“The market has not reached a turning point,” Dienhart said. “With sales declines continuing and inventories building, thanks in part to the ongoing problems in the credit markets and poor consumer confidence, we are not likely to see signs of recovery any time soon.”

And yet there were some relative bright spots, with sales improving in El Centro (+53%) and Vallejo/Fairfield (+94%) and median prices up in San Diego County (+40%) and Orange County (+16%), although one month certainly does not make a trend.

For my next Market Strategies column in Builder & Developer magazine, I'll be focusing on how different markets in California, Arizona and Nevada performed in November of 2007, as the media tends to focus on the more macro markets for their articles.