By Brenda Richardson | Forbes
Home sales tumbled for the 1oth straight month in November, according to the National Association of Realtors. All four major U.S. regions recorded month-over-month and year-over-year declines.
Home sales – completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – waned 7.7% from October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.09 million in November. Year-over-year, sales dwindled by 35.4% (down from 6.33 million in November 2021).
“In essence, the residential real estate market was frozen in November, resembling the sales activity seen during the Covid-19 economic lockdowns in 2020,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist . “The principal factor was the rapid increase in mortgage rates, which hurt housing affordability and reduced incentives for homeowners to list their homes. Plus, available housing inventory remains near historic lows.”
Total housing inventory registered at the end of November was 1.14 million units, which was down 6.6% from October, but up 2.7% from one year ago (1.11 million). Unsold inventory sits at a 3.3-month supply at the current sales pace, which was identical to October, but up from 2.1 months in November 2021.
“This week’s small decline in mortgage rates happened during the quietest time of the year,” said Holden Lewis, home and mortgage expert at NerdWallet. “The lack of demand for home loans helps to keep rates from rising. But mortgage rates are much higher than they were a year ago, and the result is a remarkable decline in the pace of existing home sales, which was 7.7% lower in November than a year before. Relatedly, the median existing home resale prices rose just 3.5% year-over-year in November, a steep decrease from earlier in the year when annual home price appreciation was in the double digits.”
