Hot off the Associated Press wire:
The Commerce Department said Thursday that new homes sales fell by 11.5 percent in August to a seasonally adjusted annual sales rate of 460,000 units, the slowest sales pace since January 1991.
It was a much bigger sales decline than the small 1 percent drop that economists had been expecting. The average price of a new home sold in August dropped by a record amount of 11.8 percent to $263,900, compared to the July average of $299,100. The median price was also down, falling 5.5 percent to $221,900.
