Last month, 4.04 million houses and apartments changed ownership, at an annualized rate, a decrease of 0.7% compared to July, and 15.3% compared to August 2022.
Housing resales in the United States continued to decline in August, penalized by high interest rates, while prices, supported by the lack of properties for sale, continued to rise.
Last month, 4.04 million houses and apartments changed ownership, at an annualized rate, a decrease of 0.7% compared to July, and 15.3% compared to August 2022, according to published data Thursday by the National Federation of Realtors (NAR).
This is less than expected, since analysts anticipated 4.10 million sales, according to the Briefing.com consensus.
“Existing home sales fell unexpectedly in August, reaching their lowest level since January,” commented Rubeela Farooqi, chief economist for HFE, in a note.
Prices continue to rise, with a median price up 3.9% over one year, to $407,100.
“Supply must double to moderate the rise in real estate prices,” underlines Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the NAR, quoted in the press release.
Many potential sellers – who will have to repurchase a property after selling theirs – are in fact discouraged by the interest rates on real estate loans, which reach 7.18% in the United States, for a 30-year fixed loan – the more common – according to data from real estate refinancing group Freddie Mac, the highest since 2002.
Thus, at the end of August, 1.11 million homes were for sale, a little more than in July, but 14.6% less than a year ago. This represents 3.3 months of sales at the current rate.
Lawrence Yun highlights two factors for the evolution of sales in the months and years to come: “the evolution of real estate loan rates will have a significant impact in the short term, while job creation will have a positive and constant in the long term.
Especially since new house starts, which bring goods to the market, fell in August to their lowest level since May 2020.
And rates are not expected to fall immediately, their evolution being linked to those of the American central bank (Fed).
If, on Wednesday, it maintained its rates stable, it warned that it planned to raise them again by the end of the year, and to maintain them in 2024 at a higher level than what it previously anticipated.
2023-09-21 16:18:42
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