Though small, both existing and new-home sales both saw increases in the month of July when compared to June, 2021. According to the latest numbers from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), existing home sales ticked up by 2.0%, while the U.S. Census and Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) report on new-home sales marked an increase of 1.0% compared to the previous month. Keep reading below for more details and some graphics representing market changes.
Existing-Home Sales See Second Month of Gains
After four months of consistent decreases, existing-home sales increased for the second consecutive month, increasing at a rate of 2.0% compared to June 2021. All regions showed an increase, and the 2.0% gain equated to a seasonally adjusted rate of 5.99 million units for the month (June 2021 saw 5.90 million).
While prices saw substantial appreciation from year to year, with a median price in July of $359,900 compared to $305,600 (a gain of 17.8%), there does appear to be some slowing on this front. May and June both saw gains in the 23% range, and this slowing of appreciation can potentially be attributed to increasing inventory.
Lawerence Yun, NAR’s Chief Economist states:
“Although we shouldn’t expect to see home prices drop in the coming months, there is a chance that they will level off as inventory continues to gradually improve”
Inventory increased by 7.3% in the month compared to June’s supply, leaving total existing-home inventory at a 2.6 month supply. While this number is still down substantially from July of 2020 (3.1 months), it’s up quite a bit from the record low of 1.9 months seen in December of 2020.
New-Home Sales Find First Gain in Months
For the first time in nearly six months, existing home sales increased from month to month, seeing a gain of 1.0% from June to July 2021. Coming off of a steep decline of 6.6% from May to June, the increase may be pointing to some sense of stabilization within the new-home market. Despite the slight increase from month to month, the seasonally adjusted rate of 708,000 was still significantly lower than July of the previous year, tracking a decrease of 27.2% (seasonally adjusted rate of 972,000).
New-home prices still remained high, too. The median sales price of a new-home for the month was $390,500 and the average sales price was $446,000.
Bottom Line
With some signs of a steadying coming to the market due to increasing inventory and interest rates, we could soon be looking at a turn away from the strong seller’s market that has persisted for the past year. Connect with all your clients now to inform them about how the market may be making a turn, soon!
