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New home sales in the U.S. dropped unexpectedly in the month of December despite an improvement of longer-term trend, the U.S. Commerce Department reported on Friday. New single-family homes declined 7.3% from a November's revised level of 398,000 to a seasonally adjusted 369,000 in December, while economists expected the new home sales to rise to 388,000.
"2012 was the first year we've seen a sustained recovery in housing," Celia Chen, a housing economist at Moody's Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said before the report. "This year will be even better. On the supply side, inventories are pretty tight. On the demand side, things are definitely improving, and that's because job growth is in place."