U.S. sales of new homes declined in July for the third straight month, a sign of continued woes in the housing market.

Sales fell 0.7% in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 298,000, the slowest pace since February, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. Sales had reached 316,000 in April before slipping.

The drop was a surprise to analysts. The consensus forecast of Wall Street economists was for a 1% gain in home sales to a 315,000 rate.

Sales of previously owned homes fell less than expected in May and prices dropped 4.6 percent from a year ago, a trade group said on Tuesday.

The National Association of Realtors said sales dropped 3.8 percent month over month to an annual rate of 4.81 million units, the lowest since November, after a downwardly revised 5.0 million unit pace in April.

It was the second straight month of declines in home resales. Economists polled by Reuters had expected sales to drop 5.9 percent to a 4.80 million-unit pace from the previously reported 5.05 million-unit rate.

Consumers are spending cautiously in the face of still-high gasoline and grocery-store prices and restraining the economy’s growth.

But some relief could be on the way: Wholesale food prices dropped last month by the most in a year. And motorists are likely to face lower gasoline prices this summer. CEOs for the nation’s largest companies say they plan to step up hiring over the next six months.

Retail sales fell 0.2 percent in May, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. The first decline in nearly a year occurred mainly because Americans bought fewer cars.

The drop in auto sales was 2.9 percent, the sharpest drop in 15 months.

After a spectacular first week of sales, with almost 1.2 million copies of her CD and downloads sold, the second week shows a big fall off. “Born this Way” sold only 169,387 copies last week. That’s a drop of 85% from the first week. It’s important to remember that 440,000 of those first week sales were only for 99 cents. So the fall off is really less, I guess. But if we stick the official numbers, “Born this Way” is in swift decline.

Sales of homes in some stage of foreclosure declined in the first three months of the year, but they still accounted for 28 percent of all home sales — a share nearly six times higher than what it would be in a healthy housing market.
Foreclosure sales, which include homes purchased after they received a notice of default or were repossessed by lenders, hit the highest share of overall sales in a year during the first quarter, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.

"It's an astronomically high number," said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac. "In a normal market, you're looking at the percentage of homes sold in foreclosure to be below 5 percent."

The pace at which homes are entering the foreclosure process has slowed in recent months amid bank and court delays. But distressed properties remain a fixture of a housing market still searching for a sustained recovery. The properties, often in need of repair, typically sell at a discount,

Sales of houses and condominiums in the most populous Southern California counties fell 29.9 percent from the previous month and 48.5 percent from a year earlier, DataQuick Information Systems said on Tuesday. The report covers the counties of Los Angeles

Still, Internet commerce is growing at a pace that traditional merchants would envy.