Housing market: Pending home sales fall for fourth straight month
Source: Yahoo! Finance
Yahoo Finance
Housing market: Pending home sales fall for fourth straight month
Amanda Fung · Editor
Fri, March 25, 2022, 10:06 AM
The housing market in the U.S. may finally be cooling off. ... Pending home sales, a leading indicator of the health of the housing market, declined for the fourth straight month. The National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) Pending Home Sales Index, which tracks the number of homes that are under contract to be sold, fell 4.1% in February from January and dropped 5.4% from the same month a year ago. The results were disappointing as analysts predicted a 1.0% increase in sales from a month earlier, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates.
Contract signings were down in all four regions of the U.S. compared to the same time a year ago. Only the Northeast recorded an increase in activity from a month earlier. ... “Pending transactions diminished in February mainly due to the low number of homes for sale,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, in a press statement. “Buyer demand is still intense, but it’s as simple as ‘one cannot buy what is not for sale.’”
Total housing inventory continues to remain depressed. At the end of February there were 870,000 units available for sale, up 2.4% from January and down 15.5% from one year ago, according to the NAR. Unsold inventory sits at a 1.7-month supply at the current sales pace, up from the record-low supply in January of 1.6 months and down from 2.0 months in February 2021.
The lack of inventory is driving home prices to record highs. ... The median existing-home price for all housing types in February rose 15% to $357,300, up 15.0% from February 2021, as prices grew in each region. This marks 120 consecutive months of year-over-year increases, the longest-running streak on record.
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Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pending-home-sales-february-2022-140538646.html
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