Pending home sales dipped in February for a second straight month, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR)
- M-O-M: The Pending Home Sales Index fell 10.6% from January to 110.3 in February.
- Y-O-Y: The Pending Homes Sales Index fell 0.5% compared to the same time last year.
ANALYSIS: Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, said in a statement, “The demand for a home purchase is widespread, multiple offers are prevalent, and days-on-market are swift but contracts are not clicking due to record-low inventory,”
Here in the South we saw a decline of 13% from January, but the index was up 2.9% from February 2020.
- The Midwest saw the second biggest drop with a 9.5% decline from January and a 6.1% drip from the same time a year ago
- The Northeast fell 9.2% from January and the index was down 3.9% from the same time year ago.
- The index in the West fell 7.4% in February, but was up 1.9% from February 2020.
It is clear that historically low inventory levels are having an impact on home sales. When a single home is getting 88 offers in 48 hours and homes are appreciating at an annualized rate of 11.2% there are clearly too few houses for sale.
