U.S. pending-home-sales gauge weakens in February
A sale is listed as pending when the contract has been signed but the transaction has not closed.
What happened: There was a 7.2% drop in the Midwest, but the other regions saw smaller moves, including gains in the West and the South and a modest 0.8% drop in the Northeast. Lawrence Yun, the chief economist of the NAR, said the decline wasn’t a surprise after a strong January increase of nearly 5%.Big picture: For the year, the NAR is forecasting existing home sales to fall 0.7% to 5.3 million and the median existing home price to climb 2.7%.Prices have outgrown inflation for years, thanks both to supply constraints as well as a strong jobs market. Mortgage rates retreating from highs has also helped demand.
What they’re saying: “As a whole, these numbers indicate that a cyclical low in sales is in the past but activity is not matching the frenzied pace of last spring,” said Yun. Market reaction: The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.26% and the S&P 500 SPX, +0.37% both rose in early trade. The 10-year yield TMUBMUSD10Y, +0.82% , which typically leads mortgage rates, was around 2.39% on Thursday morning.Steve Goldstein Steve Goldstein is MarketWatch's Washington bureau chief. Follow him on Twitter @MKTWgoldstein.
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