Washington – Pending sales of existing homes rose by 5 percent in June compared with the previous month, a surprisingly positive sign for the beleaguered housing market, a real estate trade group said Wednesday.
The National Association of Realtors said that it was the largest monthly gain in more than three years and that increases in pending sales were reported across much of the country. However, Lawrence Yun, the trade group’s senior economist, wasn’t overly optimistic, and the pending-sales index remained 8.6 percent below year-ago levels.
Pending home sales in the Denver area were down during the same period, according to separate data released last month.
The number of metro-area homes placed under contract in June was down 3.4 percent, to 6,136, from May. But the number was up 1.4 percent from June 2006, according to a report compiled by independent real estate analyst Gary Bauer, who compiles a monthly housing report using statistics from Metrolist.
“It is too early to say if home sales have already passed bottom,” Yun said in a statement addressing the national numbers.
Since there typically is a period of one to two months between when buyers and sellers sign a sales contract and when the property changes hands, pending home sales in June are likely to be completed between July and August.
The trade group’s index of pending home sales rose to 102.4 in June, up from a downwardly revised figure of 97.5 in May. Wall Street had been anticipating a slight decrease, as analysts surveyed by forecast a decline of 0.6 percent from the original May number of 97.7.
The index, calculated since 2001, is based on a national sample that represents about 20 percent of existing- home sales.
It is considered an indicator of how sales will perform in the coming weeks because it measures home purchases in which a sales contract has been signed but the deal has not yet been closed.
The report comes amid a flood of negative news about the housing market and the troubled mortgage industry. A housing index released Tuesday by Standard & Poor’s said U.S. home prices fell for a fifth consecutive month in May, the index’s steepest drop in about 16 years. The S&P/Case-Shiller index that covers 10 U.S. cities fell 3.4 percent in May from a year earlier in the steepest decline since the summer of 1991.
