Home Sales Up

Sales of existing homes in the USA went up by 2.86% last month, from 4.89 million homes to 5.03 million homes.

This measure tracks units. Condominiums, co-ops, and single family homes. What "sales pace" means is that the National Association of Realtors calculates how many homes were sold, makes adjustments for seasonal factors like weather, school, vacations, then calculates how many homes would sell in a year at that given pace. When we use raw data, we try to state that clearly.

Sales Pace by Region

For month to month comparisons, sales in almost all regions were up. The Northeast up most sharply at 11.25%, followed by the South at 2.48% and the Midwest by 2.06%, The only region that was down was the West, by -1.08%

Nationwide though, sales were down by -23.79% compared to last year. The regional declines were hardest at the edges of the country — West -29.23%, Northeast -26.45, South -21.96%, and the Midwest by -19.48%

Next Report

March sales data will be released near the end of April.

The median average is the "midpoint" sales price. Half the home were sold above that price and half below.

Home Prices Fall

Nationally, the median average sales price fell compared to last year, down nationally by -8.24%, to a median average of $195,900. The Northeast showed a slight gain of sales price to .42%, while the rest showed drops — West -13.39%, South -8.61% and the Midwest by -7.10%.

We compare values to the same period a year ago. We do not use month-to-month comparisons because there are sometimes huge fluctuations in the size of houses that sell in different seasons. Larger houses sell during the summer when it is more convenient for families to move.

Inventory Up

It would take 9.6 months to sell all the homes currently available on the market. That is down. Lower. Last month's inventory was 10.2 months.

At the end of February, there were 4,034,000 homes for sale. That is down from 4,160,000 in January.

Inventory is measured in two ways. "How many homes are available for sale?" and "How many months would it take to sell the total number of homes available for sale right now, at the current sales pace?" When the sales pace declines, inventory measured in months will increase, even in the same number of homes are for sale.