This morning's release of the September Existing-Home Sales showed that sales fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.71 million units from the previous month's 4.78 million. The Investing.com consensus was for 4.70 million. The latest number represents a 1.5% decrease from the previous month and a 23.8% decrease YoY.

Here is an excerpt from today's report from the National Association of Realtors.

WASHINGTON (October 20, 2022) – Existing-home sales descended in September, the eighth month in a row of declines, according to the National Association of REALTORS^®. Three out of the four major U.S. regions notched month-over-month sales contractions, while the West held steady. On a year-over-year basis, sales dropped in all regions.

Total existing-home sales,¹ https://www.nar.realtor/existing-home-sales, completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, retracted 1.5% from August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.71 million in September. Year-over-year, sales waned by 23.8% (down from 6.18 million in September 2021).

"The housing sector continues to undergo an adjustment due to the continuous rise in interest rates, which eclipsed 6% for 30-year fixed mortgages in September and are now approaching 7%," said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. "Expensive regions of the country are especially feeling the pinch and seeing larger declines in sales." [Full Report]

In terms of median home sales prices (all), here's the latest:

The median existing-home price³ for all housing types in September was $384,800, an 8.4% jump from September 2021 ($355,100), as prices climbed in all regions. This marks 127 consecutive months of year-over-year increases, the longest-running streak on record. It was the third month in a row, however, that the median sales price faded after reaching a record high of $413,800 in June, the usual seasonal trend of prices trailing off after peaking in the early summer.

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.

(Click on image to enlarge)

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 20% 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.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Existing-home sales are 9.9% below the NAR's January 2000 estimate. The population-adjusted version is 24.1% below the turn-of-the-century sales.

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