New-Home Sales Fall Nationwide

The nation's new-home market cooled significantly in January despite unseasonably warm weather in most of the country, the Commerce Department reported today. Sales declined 5 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis, leaving a record backlog of 528,000 newly built single-family homes that remain unsold.

``The housing market is coming back to earth,'' Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisers, said in a statement. ``While there is no free-fall, when the big push comes in the spring and buyers see they have some power for the first time in years, there could be some major impacts on prices.''

Sales declined in the Northeast, Midwest and the South. However, here in the West, sales were up 11.3 percent in January after climbing 6.3 percent in December.