Existing home sales beat estimates, but don’t reflect recent higher rates

Today’s existing home sales data surprisingly exceeded estimates. While home prices are still up year over year, this report may be outdated and may not fully reflect current mortgage rates. The key question is how sales will perform going forward. Since 2022, when mortgage rates have risen above 7%, demand tends to slow. This is why we created our weekly Housing Market Tracker — to provide insight into market trends months in advance of other reports. Let’s review today’s report and compare it with the results from when rates were slightly lower. From NAR: Existing-home sales increased by 1.5% month-over-month and decreased by 2.2% year-over-year, according to the National Association of REALTORS® Existing-Home Sales report. The report provides the real estate ecosystem, including agents, homebuyers and sellers, with data on home sales, prices and inventory.One thing to keep in mind is that last year’s comps will make it hard to show any growth in existing home sales, even if mortgage rates were slightly lower. Last year, mortgage rates were much lower at this time and housing demand peaked in December, approaching a nine-month high. Therefore, the negative year-over-year data is ...