Pending Home Sales Increase Year-Over-Year

Things are looking up for overall home sales nationwide. According to Altos Research, a housing market data provider, the number of pending home sales increased 14% year-over-year in Q3-2024, accounting for 354,000 homes at that stage. Currently, there are 736,000 unsold single-family homes on the market, down from a few weeks ago, but available housing inventory is still 29.8% higher than last year.

On the demand side, the market showed a jump in new transactions just as it did a jump in new listings this week. We counted 63,000 new contracts started for single family homes this week. This may be evidence that activity is a bit of noise, some fluctuations caused maybe by hurricanes. People had deals to do, but they got delayed for a few weeks. The key with the newly pending home sales data is that we always keep our eyes open for conditions where sellers are climbing but buyers are not. And this week both sellers and buyers accelerated. Read more