Sales of new homes in the United States for 2006 took its biggest tumble since the recession year of 1990, the Commerce Department reported on Friday.

It said sales of new homes totaled 1.06 million units for all of 2006, down 17.3 percent from sales of 1.28 million units in 2005. The plunge was the biggest decline since a 17.8 percent drop in 1990.

The median sales price of new houses sold in December 2006 was 235,000 dollars, and the average sales price was 290,100 dollars. The median is a typical market price where half of the homes sold for more and half sold for less.

The seasonally adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of December was 537,000. This represents a supply of 5.9 months at the current sales rate.

Sales of both new and existing homes suffered sharp declines last year. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported on Thursday that only 6,480,000 existing-home sales in all of 2006, down 8.4 percent from a record 7,075,000 in 2005, the biggest annual decline since 1989, when existing home sales fell by 14.8 percent.