Having jumped to an all-time high in August, the National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index, a seasonally adjusted index for which 100 denotes “an average level” of activity, slipped 2.2 percent in September to 130.0 but remains 20.5 percent above its mark at the same time last year with 19.2 percent less on less inventory on the market, which is pushing prices up, versus 94 percent more inventory on the market, year-over-year, in San Francisco.

4 thoughts on “Pending Home Sales in the U.S. Slip”
  1. And the declining rents that indirectly drive home prices in the Bay Area, unlike the rest of the country, are declining both in The City and the rest of the area. From In the U.S., City Rents Are Falling, and Suburban Rents Are Climbing:

    Since the beginning of the pandemic, cities on both coasts have seen sharp declines in average rents, even double-digit dips for some. But the story looks different in other places. Outside the coastal job centers once dubbed “superstar cities,” many metros haven’t suffered the same acute drops in rent…average rents in 30 core cities have dropped more than 5%, while average rents in the suburbs of those cities have inched up half a percentage point.
    In the cities that have suffered the deepest rent declines…above all San Francisco (-18%) — suburban rents have taken a tumble, too. In these metros, housing shortages have proven so severe that the suburbs function like outlying uptown neighborhoods. Without the usual summer surge in recent graduates and new hires that draw droves of people to the city, these entire metros are registering record-breaking vacancies.
    Will renters continue migrating to the suburbs until that rebound comes — or even after? That’s harder to forecast…it’s more likely that Covid-19 jumpstarted decisions that were already in the works. Record low interest rates and severe housing shortages had many people already primed to leave the city; the pandemic gave them a push.

    Emphasis mine. At some point, the homes that are being held off market by folks betting that pandemic-related declines in prices will be temporary are going to come back to market, adding to inventory.

    1. Absolutely. This will not be over anytime soon. The virus is currently surging and a few promising vaccines look like they are not going to pan out. Dr. Faucci just said not to expect any type of normalcy until 2022. People on here expecting things to be over this spring are being completely ridiculous. I predict at least a 20% drop in condo prices in 2021 from previous highs.

  2. Will renters continue migrating to the suburbs until that rebound comes — or even after? That’s harder to forecast…it’s more likely that Covid-19 jumpstarted decisions that were already in the works.

    Remote working has been in the making for at least 2 decades now. What has changed in 2020 is the availability of network/software and related scale/cost infrastructure that didn’t exist in 2000. The difference now is its possible to receive/transmit HD video direct to home. If you look at Starlink and other low-orbit satellite technologies, it is a direct attempt at connect Near Remote + Far Remote regions with low latency/high bandwidth networking. Once these technologies are fully realized this + next year, i don’t see why companies won’t take advantage of this.

    If I can WFH living in Bay Area .. that is essentially the same argument for WFH from anywhere within reasonable time-diff. This is inevitable. I mean the template for this has been in the works for quite a while now — with or without the pandemic.

    The pandemic simply moved the timeline forward.

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