Getting your player ready...
WASHINGTON — Sales of new homes rose 11.1 percent in March, the Commerce Department said Monday, marking a mild improvement from the worst-ever showing as the dampening effect of winter storms and an expiring California tax credit wore off.
The still-bleak reading of a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 300,000 represented a 21.9 percent nose-dive from March 2010 levels. Analysts had attributed February’s weakness in part to winter storms that depressed figures in the East and the Midwest, as well as the expiration of a California tax credit. The data in March bore out that view. MarketWatch
