Among May’s set of housing statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau, perhaps the most telling is that the number of new homes sold has stayed almost exactly flat since January 2009, at about 340,000 units. This is important because, with new home starts so low, the unsold inventory has continued to drop. This story also considers positive factors encouraging new home construction markets, negative factors inhibiting them and the most recent levels of starts nationally, regionally and by units.