Having ticked down 3.4 percent in May, the seasonally adjusted pace of existing-home sales across the U.S. dropped another 5.4 percent in June to an annual rate of 5.12 million sales, representing the eleventh straight month with a year-over-year decline in sales, the largest year-over-year decline in sales (14.2 percent) since the pandemic hit, and the slowest seasonally adjusted pace of sales since June of 2020, according to data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
At the same time, the number of existing homes on the market at the end of last month, net of all sales, increased another 9.6 percent and was 2.4 percent higher than at the same time last year with the inventory of unsold new homes on the market having now climbed to a 14-year high with the pace of sales having dropped.
And while the median existing-home sale price last month was a record $416,000 and 13.4 percent higher than it was at the same time last year, that’s with a dramatic shift in the mix of the homes that have sold, a key point that we really can’t overemphasize, and a big drop in the average mortgage loan size over the past couple of weeks, which will result in a drop in the median sale price, none of which should catch any plugged-in readers by surprise.
