WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – U.S. home sales fell in December due to record-low inventory and higher prices.

The National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales declined 4.6% to 6.18 million units in the last month. This was a seasonal adjusted annual rate. All regions saw a drop in sales. Reuters polled economic experts and forecast that sales would decline to 6.44 million units.

On a year-on, home resales, the largest portion of U.S. house sales, fell 7.1%. The most sold homes since 2006 was 6.12million. This was 8.5% more than in 2020. The market’s upper-end was still the most lucrative.

Investors as well individuals are driving the demand for housing. They renovate then resell their homes to profit from this hot market. Higher house prices, increased mortgage rates, and tighter supply could all make it more difficult to purchase a home.

The government released data on Wednesday showing that there’s a record number of houses still being built, but they are not in progress. This week, builders stated that the typical time for single-family construction was being slowed by higher material costs and shortfalls.

After a thorough review of the U.S. anti-dumping, countervailing duties orders, it nearly doubled its duty on Canadian softwood lumber imported from Canada to 17.9%.

In December, the average existing home price rose 15.8% to $358,000 from one year ago. In 2021, the average price of a house was $346,000. This is 16.9% more than in previous years.

Last month’s record low 910,000 homes that were previously owned was only 18.0% lower than November, and 14.2% less than a year ago. It would take approximately 1.8 months for all the inventory to be sold at December’s pace. This is down from 1.9 month ago.

Supply of six to seven months is considered healthy.

Last month’s average property remained on the marketplace for 19 days, a decrease of 21 days compared to a year earlier. Seventy nine percent of December homes were sold within a month.

Last month’s sales were 30% higher than the 31% recorded a year earlier.