Pending Home Sales Continue Slide

The most obvious way to predict future home sales would be to take a look at the list of homes that are under contract and waiting for closing. These are what we refer to as “Pending Home Sales” and we can track them on a daily basis in the Tallahassee MLS.

The real estate graph above shows is the one-year trend of pending home sales, so the changes that we see are not due to any annual seasonality in any way (every point on the graph contains a full 365 days worth of information).

With the tax credit ending as a stimulant to new pending home sales, this report unfortunately appears to be showing fairly instant feedback. 14 weeks after the end of the Homebuyer Tax Credit, pending home sales are down 6.7%. This might not be terminal, but it is not good.

Thus far, the steep decline that started on May 1st seems to be unabated, and it is going to be critical that we see more buyers enter the market, and soon! Already, the pace of new contracts has dropped back to where we were last October, so hopefully we won't see a new bottom develop.

Join us keeping a close eye on the Pending Home Sales Report at The Market Bulletin.