Key Highlights
- Pending home sales up +20.5% y/y, according to National Association of REALTORS® (NAR)
- Expect monthly downward revisions
- New home sales up +32.1% y/y, according to Census/HUD report
Housing experts encourage us to look at and more heavily weight year-over-year data rather than month-to-month data. That being said, the two most important data trends to focus on to best understand housing market trends are, again according to industry experts, year-over-year pending home sales and year-over-year new home sales. Both of these data points border on the spectacular.
According to the National Association of REALTORS (NAR), pending home sales in the US were up +20.5% y/y. And according to the Census/Housing and Urban Development (HUD) report, new home sales are up +32.1%, despite a slight (and expected) decline of -3.5% from August to September.
Purchase application data has been averaging +20% y/y for 23 consecutive weeks. Looking at the last four weeks, year-over-year growth looks like this:
- +24%
- +26%
- +24%
- +21%
Despite existing home sales being down -0.2% for the year, experts expect that a total of more than 6M homes will be sold in 2020, all in the midst of a severe global pandemic. This estimated total of home sales makes, according to Logan Mohtashami writing for HousingWire, “…the US housing market the most outperforming economic sector in the world.”
Thanks to HousingWire, the National Association of REALTORS®, the US Census Bureau and US Department of Housing and Urban Development
