Sales of new homes in the US dropped 11.3% to an annualized rate of 355k units in November.

The consensus was for a rise of 2.3%. to 438,000 from 430,000 a month earlier.

This is a really ugly number, far lower than the anticipated decline. It comes on the news of a 30K downward revision to 400k units annualized in October.

New home sales are down 9.0% compared to November of last year when the annualized sales pace stood at 390k. That right: new home sales are worse than they were at the height of the financial crisis.

Some additional data points: