The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) released its Pending Home Sales Index for December 2009 on February 2, 2010. Pending sales rose slightly by 1.0% from the prior month.
Lawrence Yun, NAR Chief Economist
NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun pointed out that the December figures represented the 5th highest monthly sales total in two years. Yun noted that ”While New-Home Sales will remain low due to a lack of construction, existing-home sales are projected to rise to about 5.6 million in 2010.” This is a projected 8.5% increase for 2010 over the 5.16 million existing-home sales reported for 2009.
Yun also noted that one of the greatest benefits from rising sales will be firming home prices. “For several months now we’ve been seeing stabilization in all of the home price measures as inventory is pulled down. As a result, the housing wealth for many middle-class families has begun to stabilize.”
We pointed out in a previous Housing 101 post that we also think that the Case-Shiller Housing Price Index will begin to report year-over-year price increases starting with the January, 2010 report that will be released in March, 2010. The reason for our belief in the coming increases is that the sharp monthly price decreases reported at the end of 2008 will drop out of the annual calculations and be replaced with slowly rising monthly prices in early 2010.
See the full report: http://www.realtor.org/research/research/phsdata
