Having slipped 0.8 percent in March, the National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index, for which 100 denotes an average level of activity, declined another 1.3 percent in April to 109.8, which is 3.3 percent lower than the same time last year.
The year-over-year decline for the national index is the first this year and the largest since mid-2014.
In the West, the index actually increased 5.8 percent to an even 100.0 but remains 4.2 percent lower on a year-over-year basis (versus 5.0 percent higher at the end of last year).