Existing home sales in February jumped 14.5% to an annualized rate of 4.58 million, the largest monthly percentage increase since July 2020 and ending a 12-month slide, data from the National Association of Realtors out Tuesday showed.
Existing home sales had fallen for a record 11 straight months ahead of this morning’s print for January, which consensus expected to reveal a 2% MoM rebound. However, existin home sales for January actually tumbled 0.7% MoM (well below the 2.0% jump expected) and the record 12th straight monthly decline with December’s 1.5% decline actually revised even worse to -2.2% MoM…
The growing rental crisis in the U.S. has shown no signs of stopping. That was the topic of a new Bloomberg report this week that highlighted the stories of numerous Americans struggling to meet their rental obligations.
The pandemic housing boom hit a peak and should start rolling over as rising inventory forces some home sellers to slash prices. The weight of soaring mortgage rates and increasing inventory are the possible markings of a top that has already led some sellers in major US cities to cut listing prices.
The red hot pandemic-era housing market is cooling as historically tight available inventory shows signs of reversing. An affordability crisis has removed millions of new home buyers as the number of active US listings soared 18.7% in June from a year earlier, the most significant increase in Realtor.com’s data going back to 2017, according to Bloomberg.
A strange narrative of “defeated inflation” is circulating in the mainstream in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s recent 75bps interest rate hike, but we’ve seen this kind of false optimism from the Fed and the media before.
U.S. mortgage rates jumped more than half a percentage point this week, an increase not seen in decades and one sure to price even more Americans out of the housing market.
Three weeks ago, we showed readers what happens when the infamous “Bullwhip effect” reversal takes place by presenting the unprecedented surge in the “Inventory to Sales” ratio for a broad range of US retailers covering the furniture, home furnishings and appliances, building materials and garden equipment, and a category known as “other general merchandise,” which includes Walmart and Target. Since then, this ratio has only gotten even more extended, and as shown below it is now at the highest level since the bursting of the dot com bubble!
Inflationary concerns are casting doubt on the U.S. economy, but so far are having no impact on the red-hot rental housing market.
Rent growth accelerated slightly again this month, with our national index up by 1.2 percent over the course of May.