NAR Report: Housing Shortage Hampers Existing Home Sales in January

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their January 2018 report which indicates that housing supply is still affecting existing-home sales nationwide.  For the second month in a row, existing home sales which are completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops has gone down by 3.2% in January to a seasonally adjusted annual figure of 5.38 million units.  Overall sales are down 4.8% year to year which is the largest decline since 2014.

The main factor for the decline in the sale of homes during this period continues to be the lack of supply.  Lawrence Yun, chief economist for NAR states “The utter lack of sufficient housing supply and its influence on higher home prices muted overall sales activity in much of the U.S. last month.  While the good news is that realtor in most areas are saying buyer traffic is even stronger than the beginning of last year, sales failed to follow course and far lagged last January’s pace. It’s very clear that too many markets right now are becoming less affordable and desperately need more new listings to calm the speedy price growth.”

The numbers clearly show that house prices are becoming less affordable as the median existing home price increased to $240,500.  This is a 5.8% increase from the same period last year ($227,300).  Housing inventory overall increased this month 4.1% to 1.52 million homes but is still down 9.5% from a year ago.

In the Northeast, sales were down 7.6% from a year ago and decreased by 1.4% for the month.  The project annual rate of sales is 730,000.   Median purchase price in the region was $269,100.  This is an increase of 6.8% from January 2017.

 Blue Harbour Property Management is a full service NYC property management company servicing the boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx.  Whether it be a 1 bedroom condo or multi-family building we are able to assist our clients maximize their investments.

http://www.blueharbourpropertymanagement.com/nar-report-housing-shortage-hampers-existing-home-sales-january/