US existing home sales rise more than expected in August
By Michele Maatouk
Date: Thursday 19 Sep 2019
(Sharecast News) - Sales of US existing homes rose more than expected in August, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.
Sales increased 1.3% to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 5.49 million, beating expectations of 5.37 million and hitting the highest level since March last year.
Sales were up 2.6% from a year ago, while the median price of an existing home rose 4.7% from August 2018 to $278,200. Total housing inventory at the end of August fell to 1.86m from 1.90m existing-homes available for sale in July, marking a 2.6% drop from 1.91m one year ago.
Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said: "As expected, buyers are finding it hard to resist the current rates. The desire to take advantage of these promising conditions is leading more buyers to the market.
"Sales are up, but inventory numbers remain low and are thereby pushing up home prices. Homebuilders need to ramp up new housing, as the failure to increase construction will put home prices in danger of increasing at a faster pace than income."
Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said it was a decent month but there is much better to come later in the year.
"Existing home sales continue to make up the ground lost last year, when the market was hit hard by the capping of state and local tax deductions from federal income," he said.
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