Pending Home Sales Tumble In February

Pending home sales dropped by 10.6 percent in February, with every region of the nation showing significant declines due largely to low inventory, according to a National Association of Realtors report released Wednesday.

Not only did sales drop month over month for the second straight month, they dropped 0.5 percent from a year ago as well – breaking a streak of eight months with year-over-year gains.

The Northeast Pending Home Sales Index fell 9.2 percent to 92.3 in February, a 3.9 percent drop from a year ago. The Midwest index dropped 9.5 percent to 102.4 last month, down 6.1 percent from February 2020. Pending home sales in the South dropped 13 percent to 133.2 in February, up 2.9 percent from last year. The index in the West fell 7.4 percent in February to 96.9, up 1.9 percent in February 2020.

“The demand for a home purchase is widespread, multiple offers are prevalent, and days-on-market are swift but contracts are not clicking due to record-low inventory,” NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said. “Only the upper-end market is experiencing more activity because of reasonable supply. Demand, interestingly, does not yet appear to be impacted by recent modest rises in mortgage rates.”