News In Brief

Sales of new homes in US dropped 8% last month

New home sales dropped 8.1 percent in August, with the average price of a new house falling for the third month, to $95,000, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. It said sales of new single-family homes fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 569,000 units in August, the lowest pace in a year and 25 percent below the peak rate of 712,000 annual sales in February.