New Residential Home Sales was unchanged from last month, with an annual rate sale of 288,000 new homes. Below is the graph since 1980. Just seeing how low new home sales are in comparison to the last 30 years is worth a look.

Sales of new single-family houses in August 2010 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 288,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

This is unchanged (±16.7%)* from the revised July rate of 288,000 and is 28.9 percent (±11.0%) below the August 2009 estimate of 405,000.

The median sales price of new houses sold in August 2010 was $204,700; the average sales price was $248,800. The seasonally adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of August was 206,000. This represents a supply of 8.6 months at the current sales rate.

Calculated Risk has a post on the difference between existing home sales and new home sales, which shows a huge gap between amount of new home sales vs. existing home sales and what it means.