1/29/2015
By Jennifer Coombs

The last housing reading of the week certainly didn’t negate the positive trend, but instead shows that the overall housing trend is stagnant. Indications for other housing data was positive all week, but the pending home sales report was rather disappointing, dropping by 3.7% in December. A decline for the month was not expected at all; in fact, economists expected sales to increase by 0.3% in the month. The weakness in pending sales was prevalent across all US regions, including the two largest regions: the South and the West. For the month of December, pending home sales declined by 2.6% in the South, 4.6% in the West, 7.5% in the Northeast, and 2.8% in the Midwest. We note that last week’s report for the final sales of existing homes in December popped nicely last week, but the trend remains flat. This report on pending sales doesn’t point to long-term improvement, which is still quite strange provided how positive the job market is and how low mortgage rates remain.

Jennifer Coombs
Wall Street Strategies

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