WASHINGTON – Sales of new single-family homes nationwide fell in December for the fifth consecutive month, to their lowest level since February 1995, according to the joint report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

New home sales last month fell to a seasonally adjusted rate of 604,000 units per year, a decrease of 4.7 percent from a November pace of 634,000 units per year that was 2.0 percent lower than previously reported. (READ MORE) Compared with the December 2006 rate of 1.02 million houses per year, sales fell 40.7 percent.

Analysts had expected the sales pace would hold steady last month at the initially reported November level of 647,000 homes per year, based on the median estimate from a survey of 62 economists by Bloomberg News. November sales of new houses nationwide fell 12.6 percent from their level the month before, rather than the 9.0 percent of the Census Bureau’s initial estimate, today’s revised figures show.

The median price of new houses sold nationwide last month was $219,000, a decrease of 10.9 percent from November’s $245,900. Compared with December 2006’s $247,700, the median price fell 11.6 percent in what Bloomberg News called the biggest 12-month decline in 37 years.

The new-home inventory shrank to 495,000 unsold homes at the end of December, a 1.4-percent decrease from November’s two-year low of 502,000 unsold houses and a 7.5-percent decrease from the year-ago inventory of 535,000 homes nationwide.

At the current sales pace, however, that represented a 9.6-month supply – an increase of 2.1 percent from November’s upwardly revised 9.4-month supply and 54.8 percent more than December 2006’s 6.2-month supply.

The median time on the market for homes sold last month was 6.3 months, an increase of 3.3 percent from November and 46.5 percent from December 2006’s median time of 4.3 months.

“Today’s numbers are a new blow to the idea of a housing- market recovery,” Chris Rupkey, a senior financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York, told Bloomberg News. “The broader economy is very, very close to falling over the edge. The Fed really needs to think aggressively on cutting rates as if we were in a recession.”

The central bank’s policymaking Federal Open Market Committee – which last Tuesday slashed the benchmark federal funds rate by 0.75 percentage points, in its first such inter-meeting action in nearly seven years (READ MORE) – convenes tomorrow for its regular two-day meeting.

In the Northeast, sales of new single-family homes rose to a seasonally adjusted December rate of 53,000 houses per year, an increase of 6.0 percent compared with November but a decline of 27.4 percent compared with a year ago. The region’s inventory of new houses for sale at the end of the month shrank to 47,000, a decrease of 2.1 percent from November’s 48,000-home inventory and 13.4 percent from the region’s end-of-2006 inventory of 54,000 houses.

New home sales fell last month in the South (-6.5 percent), West (-6.0 percent) and Midwest (-1.2 percent); compared with December 2006, sales fell in every region.

Additional information, including the full New Residential Sales report, is available from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of the Census at www.census.gov/newhomesales.