File photo of a home for sale in Washington
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. home sales fell for the ninth consecutive month in October as interest rates continued to rise and home prices remained high, squeezing many potential buyers out of the market.
At 4.43 million annualized data, the number of residential home resales fell 5.9% in October, said the National Association of Realtors, America’s top federation of real estate agents.
This is the lowest annualized volume since December 2011 excluding the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020.
Economists polled by Reuters expect an average of 4.38 million transactions.
On a year-over-year basis, home resales fell 28.4% in October.
Mortgage rates in the United States have risen sharply in recent months due to the increase in interest rates by the Federal Reserve: the cost of a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage thus exceeded 7% last month for the first time since 2002 according to mortgage refinancing agency Freddie Mac.
At the same time, the average price of resale homes rose again by 6.6% over one year, to $379,100 (€366,634) in October. It is up on the year for the 128th consecutive month, an unprecedented streak.
(Report Lucia Mutikani, French version Marc Angrand, edited by Blandine Hénault)
