03/29/2022
Pending Home Sales
Pending Home Sales, which measures signed contracts on existing homes, fell 4.1% in February, which was weaker than expected. Sales are now down 5.4% year over year. There is no doubt that higher interest rates could be impacting demand, but the real story here is inventory. There were only 870,000 homes for sale last month, which is down 16% from last year and 34% from July- If there were more homes for sale, there would be more sales. A longer time frame look at signed contracts shows that the level of sales is really not at terrible numbers, but off the crazy highs we set after the dip in covid and rush to purchase.