sales at slowest rate on record On New homes

Sales of new homes plunged to the slowest pace on record last month as the hobbled homebuilding industry posted its worst annual sales results in more than two decades.

The Commerce Department said Thursday that new home sales fell 14.7 percent in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 331,000, from a downwardly revised November figure of 388,000.

“This is an awful report. ... Builders just can’t cut back fast enough, so prices remain under downward pressure,” Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics, wrote in a research note.