This morning's release of the September Existing-Home Sales showed that sales fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.29 million units from the previous month's 5.88 million. The Investing.com consensus was 6.09 million. The latest number represents a 7.0% increase from the previous month and a 2.3% decrease YoY.
Here is an excerpt from today's report from the National Association of Realtors.
WASHINGTON (October 21, 2021) – Existing-home sales rebounded in September after seeing sales wane the previous month, according to the National Association of Realtors®. Each of the four major U.S. regions witnessed increases on a month-over-month basis. From a year-over-year timeframe, one region held steady while the three others each reported a decline in sales.
Total existing-home sales,1 https://www.nar.realtor/existing-home-sales, completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, rose 7.0% from August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.29 million in September. However, sales decreased 2.3% from a year ago (6.44 million in September 2020).
"Some improvement in supply during prior months helped nudge up sales in September," said Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist. "Housing demand remains strong as buyers likely want to secure a home before mortgage rates increase even further next year." [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 for the last twelve months.
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 a 19.3% 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.
Existing-home sales are 20.3% above the NAR's January 2000 estimate. The population-adjusted version is 1.9% above 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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