By:Dennis Norman
Yesterday the National Association of REALTORS(R) issued their Pending Home Sales Index report for February which showed,for the U.S.,a 2.1% increase over January.
Lawrence Yun,NAR chief economist,said “Pending home sales have a way to go for there to be a meaningful increase,but recent increases in shopping activity are hopeful indicators that we’ll see additional sales gains.”
Three of the four regions of the country showed an increase with the West showing a decline of 13.5% from January however has been reporting higher sales activity than the other regions for several months. In this model an index of “100″would mean the current contract activity is equal to the amount of contract activity in 2001. From August,2008 through January ,2009 the index for the west was above 100. For February it dropped to 89.6 which is still above the index of 82.1 for the U.S. as a whole.
The region with the lowest index was the Northeast at 63.9 however this still represents a 10.6% increase over the prior month.
As I have been saying in recent posts it appears to me there may be a chance we are finally close to the bottom of the market. While I don’t look for any sort of quick turn around and expect the market will hang around at the bottom for a while as sales slowly build over time,it is still good news.
Related posts:
- U.S. Pending Home Sales increase slightly in February;mixed results regionally
- Pending Home Sales Declines Again In January
- Pending Home Sales Increase in August;Still down 20 percent from year ago
- Pending home sales for March increase 3.2%
- Pending home sales increase in March;prediction is for an increase in existing home sales this year
