Shopping for a house to buy involves many choices. One of the most obvious is whether you want to buy a new house or an existing home. But before you choose, you should know that market conditions can be very different between the two. For example, though the overall supply of homes remains low, there's actually a pretty good stock of new homes available for sale. In fact, according to recently released numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, there was a 6.3-month supply of new homes for sale in October at the current sales rate. Comparatively, there was just a 2.4-month supply of existing homes. In other words, new home shoppers may find more options to choose from. Finding an affordable one may be more challenging, though. In October, the median sales price of new homes was $407,700, while the median existing-home price was nearly $60,000 less.
