Sales of new U.S. single-family homes jumped by over 10 percent over the month in December to a nine-month high, boosted by a shortage of previously owned houses on the market. New home sales rose 11.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 811,000 units last month, the highest level since March, the Commerce Department said in a Jan. 26 release (pdf). While that’s a substantial bump from November’s annual rate of 725,000 units, it’s around 14 percent lower than the December 2020 figure of 943,000. A total of 762,000 new homes were sold in the United States in all of 2021, compared to 822,000 in 2020, a decrease of around 7.3 percent. New home sales account for a little over 10 percent of all U.S. home sales, with existing home sales totaling 6.12 million units in 2021, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Overall homebuyer demand …