Credit NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun for the Hoot of the Day.
The NAR reports Existing-Home Sales Receded 5.9% in March
Six Key Highlights
- Existing-home sales slipped 5.9percent in March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.02 million.
- Sales are down 2.4 percent from one year ago.
- The median existing-home sales price climbed 2.7 percent from March 2024 to $403,700, an all-time high for the month of March and the 21st consecutive month of year-over-year price increases.
- The inventory of unsold existing homes jumped 8.1 percent from the previous month to 1.33 million at the end of March,
- Supply is 4.0 months at the current monthly sales pace.
- Sales are down 26.6 percent from the cycle high of 6.34 million in January of 2022.
Existing-Home Sales Percent Change from Month Ago
Existing-Home Sales Percent Change from Year Ago
After a 4-month surge into positive territory based on super-easy comparisons, existing-home sales are now down again year-over-year.
Existing-Home Sales Supply
The cyclical nature of the chart is another sign of seasonal adjustment errors at the NAR.
Despite seasonal adjustments, the data shows strong seasonal tendencies. This also implies faulty seasonal adjustments.
My Comments Last Month
- For three straight years we have seen a February bounce in existing-home sales (yellow highlights in charts).
- Seasonal adjustments, especially for February are questionable.
Long-Term Perspective
Existing-home sales are about where they were in November of 1978.
On a population-adjusted basis (number of households), sales are in the gutter.
Hoot of the Day
“With mortgage delinquencies at near-historical lows, the housing market is on solid footing. A small deceleration in home price gains, which was slightly below wage-growth increases in March, would be a welcome improvement for affordability. With real estate asset valuation at $52 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Flow of Funds, each percentage point gain in home prices adds more than $500 billion to the household balance sheet.” said NAR perennial cheerleader Lawrence Yun.
If the housing market was on solid footing, population-adjusted sales would not be at or near record lows. I cannot provide a chart of precisely how bad over time because the NAR has restricted access to historical data
But in 1978 there were 76.030 million households. Today there are 132.216 million households. The number of transactions is about the same.
Perhaps Yun means things are so bad, they can’t get any worse. If so, we’ll see about that.
Blame the Fed
Blame the Fed for bubble-blowing monetary policy and Congress for massive debt bubbles that have made housing unaffordable for most of generation Z.
For discussion, please see Fedthink! The Fed Is Incompetent by Design and Can’t Be Fixed
Is the Fed playing politics? Does the Fed know what it’s doing at all?
Also see my March 15, 2025 post The Case-Shiller Home Price Index Hits Another New Record High, Thank the Fed