This morning's release of the March Existing-Home Sales fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.21 million units from the previous month's revised 5.48M. The Investing.com consensus was for 5.30 million. The latest number represents an 11.8% increase from the previous month and an 0.5% decrease year-over-year.
Here is an excerpt from today's report from the National Association of Realtors.
Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, anticipated waning in the numbers for March. “It is not surprising to see a retreat after a powerful surge in sales in the prior month. Still, current sales activity is underperforming in relation to the strength in the jobs markets. The impact of lower mortgage rates has not yet been fully realized.” [Full Report]
For a longer-term perspective, here is a snapshot of the data series, which comes from the National Association of Realtors. The data since January 1999 was previously available in the St. Louis Fed's FRED repository and is now only available from January 2018. It can be found here.
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Over this time frame, we clearly see the Real Estate Bubble, which peaked in 2005 and then fell dramatically. Sales were volatile for the first year or so following the Great Recession.
The Population-Adjusted Reality
Now let's examine the data with a simple population adjustment. The Census Bureau's mid-month population estimates show an 18.3% increase in the US population since the turn of the century. The snapshot below is an overlay of the NAR's annualized estimates with a population-adjusted version.
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Existing-home sales are 0.4% below the NAR's January 2000 estimate. The population-adjusted version is 14.8% below the turn-of-the-century sales.
Existing-Home Sales Median Prices for Single Family Homes
We've added a chart for the last 12 months of Existing-home sales median prices for single-family homes for reference.
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