Sales on Track Despite Limited Housing Stock & Rising House Prices

We're more than half way through 2016. So how are we doing? So far, we're currently 120,000 home sales ahead of last year through July as you can see in our interactive housing tracker below.

Existing–home sales declined 3.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.39 million in July as inventory levels of for–sale homes remain weak in many markets across the country. This marked the first decline since February. Conversely, new home sales rose 12.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 654,000 units, the highest in nearly a decade.

On a non–seasonally adjusted basis, existing home sales are up 0.5%, and new home sales are down 32% compared to 2007 through July. Momentum is likely to carry us through the remainder of the year so we will end up with the best year in home sales in a decade. This is despite having limited inventory and rapidly rising house prices in many markets.