The Week Ahead: Where Is the Housing Market Going in Q4?

A week shortened by the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday brings us the very important NAR Existing-Home Sales report on Monday, November 22 at 10:00 a.m. EDT. Covering data from the month of October to kick off Q4 of 2021, the report will serve a good indicator on the direction of the market as 2021 comes to an end.

Tracking completed transactions, including single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums, and co-ops, last month’s dataset reported a 7.0% month-over-month rise in September, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.29 million in September. However, sales decreased 2.3% year-over-year, as last September’s report found 6.44 million existing-homes were sold in 2020.

NAR’s newest report may be impacted by the continued shortage of homes for sale, as inventory continues to suffer nationwide.

It was reported last month by NAR that total housing inventory at the end of September amounted to 1.27 million units, down 0.8% from August, and down 13.0% from one year ago (1.46 million). Unsold inventory remains at a 2.4-month supply at the present sales pace, down 7.7% from August, and down from 2.7 months in September 2020.

Click here for more on NAR’s Existing-Home Sales Report when it is released come Monday.

The following are a few other happenings coming in The Week Ahead. Note that the holiday shortened week may impact the release of some of these data sets:

• MBA Weekly Applications Survey (Wednesday)
• October U.S. Census Bureau/HUD New Residential Sales Statistics (Wednesday)
• Realtor.com Weekly Housing Market Recap (Wednesday)
• Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (Thursday)
• U.S. Department of Labor's Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report (Thursday)
• Black Knight weekly forbearance data (Friday)