Existing Home Sales Climb
For the second month in a row, existing home sales climbed. On Tuesday, the National Association of Realtors reported an increase of 0.3 percent in March compared with February. This brought the seasonally adjusted annual sales rate to 6.92 million units. Additionally, the median price of a new home rose to $218,000 last month, a gain of 7.4 percent from a year ago.
By the end of March, there were over 3.19 million units of unsold homes on the market. Experts predict that at the March sales pace, it would take 5.5 months to eliminate the backlog of unsold homes. That would represent the longest period since 5.6 months in July 1998.
David Lereah, the Realtors’ chief economist, said Houston, Cincinnati and Albuquerque, N.M., were still experiencing strong sales gains while Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Phoenix and California’s San Fernando Valley were seeing a slowdown in sales.