by Calculated Risk on 7/23/2019 10:29:00 AM

Earlier: NAR: Existing-Home Sales Decreased to 5.27 million in June

A few key points:

1) The key for housing - and the overall economy - is new home sales, single family housing starts and overall residential investment.

Overall, this is still a somewhat reasonable level for existing home sales.  No worries.

2) Inventory is still low, and was unchanged year-over-year (YoY) in June. Inventory had been up YoY every month since July 2018.

3) As usual, housing economist Tom Lawler's forecast was closer to the NAR report than the consensus. See: Lawler: Early Read on Existing Home Sales in June.   The consensus was for sales of 5.34 million SAAR.  Lawler estimated the NAR would report 5.25 million SAAR in June, and the NAR actually reported 5.27 million SAAR.

Click on graph for larger image.

4) Year-to-date sales are down about 4.2% compared to the same period in 2018.   On an annual basis, that would put sales around 5.15 million in 2019.  Sales slumped at the end of 2018 and in January 2019 due to higher mortgage rates, the stock market selloff, and fears of an economic slowdown.

The comparisons will be easier towards the end of the year.

The second graph shows existing home sales Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA).

Sales NSA in June (527,000, red column) were well below sales in June 2018 (570,000, NSA), and were the lowest sales for June since 2014.