Nicole Friedman and Gina Heeb of The Wall Street Journal report that September home sales fell 3.5% from a year earlier. In 2023, home sales hit their lowest point in 30 years.
Sales of existing homes in the U.S. are on track for the worst year since 1995—for the second year in a row.
Persistently high home prices and elevated mortgage rates are keeping potential home buyers on the sidelines. Sales of previously owned homes in the first nine months of the year were lower than the same period last year, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday.
Existing-home sales in September fell 1% from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.84 million, NAR said, the lowest monthly rate since October 2010. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had estimated a monthly decrease of 0.5%. […]
“Home sales are stuck at low levels,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “Americans are really not moving.” Yun said he forecasts that existing-home sales for 2024 as a whole could match or be slightly below last year’s level.
Expectations that the Fed would cut rates this year caused mortgage rates to drop to 6.08% in September, a two-year low. But the move came too late in the year to lure buyers, real-estate agents say. Many families prefer to purchase in the spring and move houses between school years. […]
Home-buying activity typically slows during the holiday season. Some real-estate agents say they expect sidelined buyers to re-enter the market in early 2025.
“It’s not like all of a sudden people have stopped needing to buy houses,” said David Schlichter, a real-estate agent in Denver. “You can only defer for so long.”
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