“Have no anxiety at all,” counsels Saint Paul in the Letter to the Philippians this Sunday, encouraging us to make our requests known to God “by prayer and petition.” The faith of home-builders and construction workers is being tested this week with news that sales of new U.S. homes fell to a six-month low in August. The fourth straight monthly decline during the peak buying season suggests the housing market is years away from a recovery.

New-home sales are down nearly 80 percent from their peak in July 2005. They remain far below healthy levels, which would be more than double August's rate.

"With job growth at a standstill, the stock market swinging wildly, Congress wrangling over the debt ceiling, and the euro zone's problems sending consumer confidence down, sales of new homes are slipping from an already weak pace," Celia Chen, director of housing economics at Moody's Analytics, wrote in a note to clients.

Patrick Newport, U.S. economist with IHS Global Insight, said the trend for new home sales has been flat for the last 16 months. "This year is shaping up to be the worst year on record for new home sales," Newport wrote.

The median sales price of a new home, which is the point at which half the new homes sold for more and half for less, fell nearly 9 percent to $209,100 in August. The steep drop in prices indicates that builders are struggling to attract buyers away from even cheaper so-called distressed properties, which are homes that are foreclosures or have borrowers in default.

Sources: Articles by Alan Zibel and Jeff Bater for the Wall Street Journal and Alejandro Lazo for the Los Angeles Times