Pending Home Sales Show Improvement

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 MLS.

The real estate graph below shows 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 is showing instant feedback. Beginning with the end of the Homebuyer Tax Credit, home sales have fallen and reached a new low on November 13, 2010.

Since November 13th, we have seen a steady rise, indicating that buyer activity might finally be growing again.

Future home closings have been on the decline and might reach a new market bottom in February or March. The graph below shows that we are not far away from seeing this happen with daily closed home sales.