- White House Plans to Freeze Spending to Cut Deficit
- Week Ahead: Investors Go for Quality, Assess Recovery
- Hedge Fund Billionaire Paulson Reports New Citi Stake
- Cramer: 5 Earnings Reports to Watch Next Week
- Court Rejects 'Clawbacks' for Alleged Stanford Victims
- Cities With the Most Home Price Reductions
- Tax Credit Sparking First-Time Home Sales: Realtors
- Investors Cut Back US Stocks for Bigger Growth Abroad
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
- U.S. Stocks Rally for the Second Straight Week
- Dollar is Not Plunging—So 'Calm Down': Market Strategist
- Strategists Say Markets Have More Upside — But How Much?
- Hirschhorn: Risk-Averse Traders
- Roginsky: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Financial Reform
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
- TV Series Inks Unique Deal For Fight
- First Time Buyers Rescue Housing: Realtors
- Dollar General Trades Higher After Its IPO
MOST SHARED
- Today's Market Action
- CNBC Video: Warren Buffett & Bill Gates - Keeping American Great
- Has Twitter's Finest Hours (Seconds) Come and Gone?
- Microsoft's Bill Gates Praises Apple's Steve Jobs For 'Saving the Company'
- Israel Going Green
- China's Role as Lender Alters Dynamics for United States
- Low Interest Rate Investing
- CNBC TRANSCRIPT: Warren Buffett & Bill Gates - Keeping America Great
- Inside Wal-Mart's Acai Berry Juice Maker
Text Size 
Pending home sales rose unexpectedly in September from the month before but were still far lower than a year ago, data from a real estate trade group showed.
 |
AP Open House |
The National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in September, was up 0.2% in August but was 20.4% lower than a year ago.
This was the first rise in the index since June.
Economists polled by Reuters ahead of the report were expecting sales to decline by 2.8 percent in September, following the 6.5 percent drop in August.
The association's senior economist Lawrence Yun noted that favorable mortgage interest rates are available. "Contrary to perceptions, conventional mortgages are widely available at
favorable interest rates for the bulk of home buyers," he said.
Even with the unexpected rise in pending home sales during September, the association is projecting a modest recovery for existing home sales in 2008 and does not see any real
improvement for new home sales until 2009.
"The level of pent-up demand reaching the market next year is a bit uncertain, and it is possible for even higher home sales activity than we're forecasting if buyers regain their
confidence about the long-term benefits of homeownership," said Yun.
"Over the near term, home sales are likely to be fairly flat as the lingering impact of the credit crunch filters through the system through the end of the year," he added.
Sales of previously owned homes are expected to hit 5.67 million this year, a 12.5 percent decrease from 2006. Single family homes sales are expected be down by 24.3 percent from
2006.
"We are hitting a low," said Yun at the group's conference in Las Vegas. But he cautioned that the pace of a recovery is uncertain and data on the national housing market may sag early
next year if consumer confidence does not improve.
Print
Email
- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates spoke to Columbia students, and Buffett made the students a startling offer.
- For the chief of cable company Comcast, growth has been about making deals – generally very large deals.
- Some companies may start using insurance to shift carbon risk from their balance sheets to maybe... yours?
- The president and founder of Genesis Today wants to improve America’s health, and thinks Wal-Mart can help.
- Switzerland's privacy watchdog is taking legal action to force Google to make changes to its Street View service.
- A wealthy, distracted Texas driver crashed his million-dollar Bugatti Veyron sports car into a salt marsh, say police.
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes