January 30 2025

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) released its Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) for December this morning.  Pending sales measures the number signed purchase contracts for existing homes. As such, the index is a good early indicator for Existing Home Sales in the coming month. Pending sales dropped 5.5% from last month, which was the highest level for the index since April 2023. Sales had also been on a 4 month winning streak.  In other words, sales activity remains in solid territory, in the upper middle portion of the range over the past year.  As is the case with most housing-related metrics, that range is at historically low levels.  Regional breakdown of monthly and (year-over-year changes): Northeast  -8.1% (-1.3%) Midwest -4.9% (-6.9%) South -2.7% (-5.1%) West -10.3% (-5.1%)

January 28 2025

Both S&P Case-Shiller and the FHFA released national home price indices this morning. In both cases, November's prices were slightly higher than expected.  For the Case Shiller data, this meant that prices declined less than expected. Unlike FHFA prices, Case Shiller is NOT seasonally adjusted--something that is immediately apparent when viewing a month-to-month chart. November is frequently near the low point of any given year for price appreciation. This month's 0.1% decline is an improvement from October's 0.2% decline or the 0.3% drop from last November. Regionally, Boston and New York were top performers in November, but only NY and Chicago were over 6% year over year. As seen in the table above and the chart below, prices are easily in positive territory in year-over-year terms.  The same is true for FHFA, which is seeing almost the exact same change as Case Shiller.  In addition, both indices have been fairly flat in the low 4% range recently.

January 24 2025

It's no mystery that 2024 hasn't been a stellar year for home sales and many other housing metrics. Today's release of December's Existing Home Sales from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) confirmed that.   Bad news first: with December in the books, 2024 goes down as the worst year for existing sales since 1995, just barely edging out 2008.3 The good news is that 2024 is over and we ended the year on the upswing in terms of month-to-month and year-over-year momentum. In addition to 3 straight months of improvement and the best sales pace since February, December's annual pace of 4.24m is 9.3% higher than last December and the largest annual increase since June 2021 (to be clear, the 12 months in 2024 added up to the lowest level of any year since 1995, but this month's pace was the best since mid 2021 when compared to the same month from the previous year). “Home sales in the final months of the year showed solid recovery despite elevated mortgage rates,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “Home sales during the winter are typically softer than the spring and summer, but momentum is rising with sales climbing year-over-year for three straight months. Consumers clearly understand the long-term benefits of homeownership. Job and wage gains, along with increased inventory, are positively impacting the market.” full release...