WASHINGTON -- Americans signed more contracts to buy homes in April for the third-straight month, driving pending home sales to the highest level in more than a decade.
The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that its seasonally adjusted index of pending home sales surged 5.1 percent last month to 116.3, the highest since 117.4 in February 2006.
"The ability to sign a contract on a home is slightly exceeding expectations this spring even with the affordability stresses and inventory squeezes affecting buyers in a number of markets," the association's chief economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement. "The building momentum from the over 14 million jobs created since 2010 and the prospect of facing higher rents and mortgage rates down the road appear to be bringing more interested buyers to the market."
The April numbers are the latest example of good news for the housing industry, which is in the middle of the spring home-buying season. Pending home sales are up 4.6 percent from a year ago.
Sales climbed 11.4 percent last month in the West, 6.8 percent in the South and 1.2 percent in the Northeast. In the Midwest, sales dipped 0.6 percent.
Pending sales contracts are a barometer of future purchases. A sale is typically completed a month or two after a contract is signed.
The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that new-home sales shot up 16.6 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted rate of 619,000, the most since January 2008. Sales of previously owned homes, which make up 90 percent of the housing market, rose in April for a second-straight month to an annual pace of 5.45 million.
U.S. home prices rose 5.7 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier as buyers competed for a limited supply of listings.
Prices climbed 1.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from the previous three months, the 19th-consecutive quarterly gain, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said.
Home prices have risen as job growth brings out more buyers in a market starved for choices. There were 1.98 million houses for sale at the end of March, down 1.5 percent from the same month last year, according to the National Association of Realtors.
While the U.S. has a whole had robust gains, prices fell from the previous quarter in 12 states and the District of Columbia, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said.
"Home price appreciation was somewhat less widespread than in recent quarters," Andrew Leventis, the agency's supervisory economist, said in a statement. While price drops were modest, "such declines are notable given the pervasive and extraordinary appreciation we have been observing for many years."
Prices in March rose 0.7 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from February, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said. The average estimate of 20 economists surveyed by Bloomberg was for a 0.5 percent gain.
The agency index measures transactions for single-family properties financed with mortgages owned or securitized by Fannie Mae, which is the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie Mac, which is the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. It doesn't provide specific prices. The national median price of a previously owned single-family home was $217,600 in the first quarter, up 6.3 percent from a year earlier, National Association of Realtors data show.
Information for this article was contributed by Paul Wiseman of The Associated Press and Michelle Jamrisko and Prashant Gopal of Bloomberg News.
Business on 05/27/2016