From Wolf Street:
Pending Home Sales Rise from Near-Record Lows, Zigzag along those Lows, -43% from 2020, -30% from 2019: Charts Speak
There was a lot of housing-promo hoopla in the media this morning about that 4.0% month-to-month increase in pending sales of existing homes in August, sign of a sudden burst of demand due to lower mortgage rates, or whatever, written by goofballs or AI that never look at a chart.
That 4.0% month-to-month seasonally adjusted increase in the Pending Homes Sales Index by the National Association of Realtors today was off near-record low in the prior month, and was still down by 30.1% from August 2019 and by 42.7% from August 2020.
And the index was below March 2025, when there was a bigger widely ballyhooed surge in demand, or whatever, that was then more than wiped out by the sharp decline in April. That’s how it goes with zigzagging month-to-month data (historic data via YCharts):
