The pace of new home sales in the US barely rose in June leaving the annual rate stuck near the bottom of a range that’s held for more than two years.

The 627,000 rate reported on Thursday by the Census Bureau missed consensus by a fairly wide margin, although this series is so volatile that it’s hard to say what counts as a “bad” miss and what’s just par for the course with a dataset as erratic as this one is.

The headline was more or less flat from the prior month, when the sales pace plunged by the second most since September of 2022 (i.e., since the Fed was in “peak hawk” mode).

Again, we’re going nowhere fast and there’s no mystery as to what’s holding back sales: Rates are too high and homes are too expensive.

The government figures capped another month of uninspired housing updates including a terrible read on builder sentiment and the second-slowest rate of single-family new construction in two years.

The NAHB said last week that nearly four in 10 builders are now resorting to price cuts, the most ever. Thursday’s release showed the median new home price in June was $401,800, the lowest since November.

The average price fell too, but only to $501,000. Note that the median price has fallen on a YoY basis in five of the last six months. And in six of the last eight.

There’s no respite in sight for builders, nor for buyers. As I put it in an e-mail blast on Wednesday, the US housing market’s looking at “total f–king gridlock.”

Although the supply picture’s improving (the new construction market’s oversupplied), and while price gains have nearly stagnated even in the resale market, the ~30% rally in property values since the pandemic and rates near 7% means the math simply doesn’t work for hundreds of thousands of would-be homeowners.

The figure above gives you some context for the inventory overhang on the new construction side.

Thursday’s data showed the supply of new homes for sale exceeded 510,000 in June. That’s the highest since 2007 and the highest ever outside of the run-up to the subprime bust.