Tag Archives: Existing-Home Sales

With the price of a new home barely above year-ago levels, builder confidence fell for the third straight month in April, dropping two points to 42.

Sometimes a story just fits--and sometimes it doesn't. Given that maxim, the explanation from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) for the drop in the Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) for February has to be viewed with a jaundiced eye. According to the NAR, the PHSI dropped because of the low inventory of homes for sale. Of course, that wasn't offered as an explanation one month earlier, when the inventory of homes for sale dropped, and the PHSI increased.

Existing-home sales rose 0.8 percent in February to 4.98 million, the National Association of Realtors reported Thursday. Economists had expected the sales pace to climb to 5.01 million from January├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós originally reported 4.92 million. January sales were revised up to 4.94 million.

It's been two weeks since the dreaded sequester took effect, and so far, the only casualty has been the White House tour. There actually have been some positives, with both parties presenting budgets. However, both the GOP budget and the Democratic plan have one major similarity: Each is dead on arrival and destined to at best be a one-house budget, which leaves the country back where it was. Setting a target for practical balance would bring us closer to reducing the deficit and with less pain.

While more than 90 percent of homes purchased in 2011 were existing homes, more than half of homebuyers declared a preference for new homes, according to the National Association of Home Builders' (NAHB) Characteristics of Home Buyers, an analysis of the 2011 American Housing Survey conducted by the Census Bureau. Along with their preference for new homes, survey respondents expressed a desire for energy-efficient homes. According to NAHB, these two qualities go hand-in-hand.

The President has tried repeatedly to describe the impact of sequestration, a mandatory across-the-board cut in federal spending exempting only a small handful of social safety net programs. Despite those exemptions, a simple fact is that people will die as a result of these cuts, and lives could be changed irrevocably. The tragedy in this is not what might happen, although that's pretty severe long-term. The tragedy is both Democrats and Republicans have the means to fix it without having to resort to face-saving techniques.

Economic data for the week ending February 22--particularly for housing--was less than encouraging. A small increase in existing-home sales was the only bright spot, but that was weighed down by another drop in the median price of existing single-family homes to their lowest level in 10 months. The word "another" is critical because it means the drop in inventory in December did not result in higher prices. Indeed, the supply of homes for sale fell again in January, this time to the lowest level in 13 years.

Florida's housing market continued its upswing into the new year, according to the latest housing data released by Florida Realtors. Statewide closed sales of existing single-family homes totaled 13,679 in January, up 11.7 percent year-over-year, the group reported. Meanwhile, pending sales--contracts signed but not yet completed or closed--for existing single-family homes rose 31 percent.

The NAR's Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) fell 4.3 percent to 101.7 in December, the sharpest month-over-month drop since April.

The housing market in California's Southland region closed out 2012 with the highest number of December home sales in three years, real estate information company DataQuick reports. According to DataQuick, a total of 20,274 new and resale homes and condos were sold in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino, and Orange counties in December. The month's total was 5.1 percent up from November and 5.3 percent up from December 2011.