Home sales activity cooled off in August, and September sales may not have heated up enough to recoup the losses — but there is still time left in the year to rally, says Auction.com.
According to the online real estate marketplace’s Real Estate Nowcast, August home sales fell 4.8 percent to 5.31 million units, the second-largest decline we have seen in more than four years.
The Nowcast projects that existing home sales in September will fall between seasonally adjusted annual rates of 5.23 million and 5.57 million annual sales, a small increase of 1.7 percent over August and a 5.9-percent increase over September 2014.
While the modest growth that the Nowcast predicts for September will not be enough to completely recoup all of the losses experienced in August, it shows that sales are expected to move back in the right direction and maintain solid year-over-year progress, Auction.com said.
“Since month-to-month sales numbers can vary significantly, this could turn out to be nothing more than a temporary blip on the radar, but it’s certainly worth watching.” – Auction.com Executive Vice President Rick Sharga
“While we reported signs last month that the housing market was cooling off, no one anticipated the kind of decline in sales volume that we saw in August,” said Auction.com Executive Vice President Rick Sharga. “Some of this could be due to the severe volatility we saw in the stock market, some could be less activity from foreign buyers due to economic issues in Europe and China and some could be the result of job losses in oil-producing states.
“Since month-to-month sales numbers can vary significantly, this could turn out to be nothing more than a temporary blip on the radar, but it’s certainly worth watching.”
Home prices have also slipped recently, but are still healthy, Auction.com added. Citing the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) August report of a 4.7-percent year-over-year increase in median existing home prices to $228,700, the Nowcast predicts that sales prices will fall between $216,372 and $239,148 in the month of September, with a targeted price of $227,760, which would be an 8.9-percent year-over-year increase.
The Auction.com Real Estate Nowcast combines industry data, proprietary company transactional data and Google search activity to predict market trends as they are occurring.