Pending Home Sales Drop For 4th Straight Month In December, Led By MidWest

After a modest, but disappointing, uptick in new home sales and existing home sales, analysts expected a drop in pending home sales in December and it did, dropping 0.3% MoM (slightly better than the 0.5% decline expeccted)

Source: Bloomberg

This is the 4th straight monthly decline, underscoring the difficulties of further upward momentum in the housing market as the lack of available properties drives up asking prices and restrains demand.

However, contract signings are still up 22.8% from a year earlier on an unadjusted basis, highlighting the strides residential real estate has made amid record-low mortgage rates and buyer preferences for larger homes that double as office space.

“There is a high demand for housing and a great number of would-be buyers, and therefore sales should rise with more new listings,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the NAR, said in a statement.

“This elevated demand without a significant boost in supply has caused home prices to increase and we can expect further upward pressure on prices for the foreseeable future.”

By region, pending home sales declined 3.6% in the Midwest, the fourth straight decrease. In the largest U.S. region — the South — contract signings edged up 0.1%. Pending sales were unchanged in the West and rose in the Northeast.