Early Reports Suggest Sales will be up from January
CALCULATEDRISK
By Bill McBride
NOTE: The tables for active listings, new listings and closed sales all include a comparison to February 2019 for each local market (some 2019 data is not available).
This is the first look at several early reporting local markets in February. I’m tracking about 40 local housing markets in the US. Some of the 40 markets are states, and some are metropolitan areas. I’ll update these tables throughout the month as additional data is released.
Closed sales in February were mostly for contracts signed in December and January when 30-year mortgage rates averaged 6.82% and 6.64%, respectively. This is down from the 7%+ mortgage rates in the August through November period.
Active Inventory in February
Here is a summary of active listings for these early reporting housing markets in January.
Inventory for these markets were down 3.8% year-over-year in January and are now up 3.5% year-over-year. A key will be if inventory builds over the next few months.
Inventory is down in all of these areas compared to 2019.
Notes for all tables:
New Listings in February
And here is a table for new listings in February (some areas don’t report new listings). For these areas, new listings were up 14.5% year-over-year.
Last month, new listings in these markets were up 5.4% year-over-year.
New listings are now up year-over-year, but still at historically low levels. New listings in most of these areas are down compared to January 2019 activity.
Closed Sales in February
And a table of February sales.
In February, sales in these markets were up 3.7% YoY. In January, these same markets were up 4.6% year-over-year Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA).
Sales in all of these markets are down compared to January 2019.
This is a year-over-year increase NSA for these early reporting markets. However, there was one more working day in February 2024 compared to February 2023, so sales Seasonally Adjusted will be lower year-over-year than Not Seasonally Adjusted sales.
This graph shows existing home sales by month for 2023 and 2024, on a Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) basis. The NAR reported sales in February 2023 were 4.53 million SAAR (the highest annualized sales rate in 2023).
This early data suggests that the February existing home sales report will likely show an increase from the January rate. If sales increased YoY in February, this will be the first YoY increase since August 2021 (following 29 consecutive months with a YoY decline in sales).
This was just several early reporting markets. Many more local markets to come!