On Thursday we learned that mortgage originations fell to a 23-year low in the first quarter, so a report from Redfin that pending home sales are way off isn’t a shock. According to a report from the online real estate brokerage, pending home sales during the four weeks ended May 28 fell 17% from a year earlier, one of the biggest declines since the start of the year.
The year-over-year drop is especially notable because pending sales had already started falling at this time last year, as mortgage rates shot up past 5%.Seasonally adjusted measures of homebuying demand show that it has also dipped in earlier stages of the house-hunting journey, Redfin said. Mortgage-purchase applications and Redfin’s Homebuyer Demand Index — a measure of home tours and other service requests from Redfin agents — are both down about 7% from a month ago. (June 5 2023)
(June 5, 2023)