New Residential Home Sales tanked -8.1% from last month, with an annual sale rate of 283,000 new homes. Sales figures of new homes are -28.5% below this time last year. The median sales price also nose dived -14% to a national $194,900. There is now an 8.6 month's supply to sell new homes at the current rate. Below is the new home sales graph since 1980. Looks like a cliff dive, doesn't it?

Yesterday the National Association of Realtors released existing home sales. There too we have a decline of -2.2% for the month.

Existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, declined 2.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.43 million in October from 4.53 million in September, and are 25.9 percent below the 5.98 million-unit level in October 2009 when sales were surging prior to the initial deadline for the first-time buyer tax credit.

But this decline to me is misleading for 34% of existing home sales are distressed properties, read foreclosures. The supply of existing homes is at 10.5 months.

The national median existing-home price for all housing types was $170,500 in October, down 0.9 percent from October 2009. Distressed homes accounted for 34 percent of sales in October, compared with 35 percent in September and 30 percent of sales in October 2009.

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Calculated Risk predicts home prices will continue to drop and has more graphs on existing home sales.