Sales of new homes continue to plummet

The housing slump has hurt a lot of people, everyone from real estate agents and mortgage loan officers to homesellers, investors and, of course, the boards of directors of several large financial institutions that have gone under since the slump’s start.

But no one has been hurt more than have been homebuilders. And things aren’t getting any better for them. The National Association of  Home Builders recently reported — citing statistics from the Commerce Department — that the sales of newly built single-family homes fell 11.5 percent in August. Officials with the department are now predicting that the country will see the sale of about 460,000 new homes this year.

That sales rate is a whopping 34.5 percent drop from the rate of August one year ago, and represents the lowest level of new-home sales activity since the first month of 1991.

The federal government’s huge proposed financial bailout is at least some good news for those suffering through the housing industry’s slump. But it’s hard to believe that the government will be able to pull us out of the housing slump. The only thing that will do that is time, lots of it, apparently. And while most economists are predicting that the housing market won’t begin its recovery until late 2009 or early 2010, the nation’s homebuilders are struggling to stay in business.