Get Blog Updates on your iGoogle homepage:
| April Pending Home Sales Index Bodes Well |
| Written by Jonathan Smoke | |
| 06.10.2008 | |
|
Discuss this article on the forums. (0 posts) There’s been much chatter since the National Association of Realtors released the preliminary April Pending Home Sales Index data on Monday. The overall index for the U.S. rose 6.3 percent to 88.2 from 83.0 in March. It’s the highest index reading since last October, but the April value was 13.1 percent lower than April 2007. I’ve seen the economists debating whether this is an anomaly caused by seasonal data or if it’s real. I’m in the “real” camp since the April measure roughly correlates to stabilization of listing prices as well as declines in days on market. As you can see from the Altos-enabled chart below from our Sales Trends page, the 90-day moving average price of listings has stabilized and improved since mid-March for the largest national composite currently available. Likewise, as the following chart indicates, the 90-day moving average of days on market has also stabilized and recently declined. The time frame for stabilization and then improvement parallels the pending sales index’s improvement. The pending sales index is a measure of contracts signed in April, so it makes sense that prices would stabilize and average days on market would improve once sales began to increase. The index was up in April in all regions of the country except for the Northeast, which saw a slight retreat. As the following chart shows, conditions have improved greatly in the West, where the index is the highest and where it’s higher than last year. The reading is still below 100 overall for the U.S. and in all regions. 100 is the benchmark level of sales that occurred in 2001. So we aren’t back to pre-boom levels of sales, but at least things are improving. Given the reads on pending sales and listing price stabilization and improvement, I would expect more positive news to come later this month as we get May homes sales and May home prices. 
We're always looking for feedback from our readers.
|
))
))
))
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
