New home sales flat year-over-year

New home sales for September were up a decent amount month-over-month, but down very slightly year-over-year:

Sales of new homes, a benchmark indicator both for the housing market and the overall economy, rose slightly but remained slow in September.

Sales reached a 313,000 annual rate in September, 5.7% more sales than the revised estimate for August, according to a monthly report from the Census Bureau released Wednesday. But sales were off 0.9% compared with 12 months earlier.

New-home sales have been hovering around the 300,000 mark for many months, a shadow of the activity of the boom years, when monthly sales peaked at an annual rate of 1.4 million units.