by Calculated Risk on 11/19/2020 01:59:00 PM

Earlier: NAR: Existing-Home Sales Increased to 6.85 million in October

A few key points:

1) This was the highest sales rate since 2006. Some of the increase over the last few months was probably related to pent up demand from the shutdowns in March and April.  There are going to be some difficult comparisons next year!

2) Inventory is very low, and was down 19.8% year-over-year (YoY) in October. This is the lowest level of inventory for October since at least the early 1990s.

3) As usual, housing economist Tom Lawler's forecast was closer to the NAR report than the Consensus.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows existing home sales by month for 2019 and 2020.

Note that existing home sales picked up somewhat in the second half of 2019 as interest rates declined.

Even with weak sales in April, May, and June, sales to date are up about 2.4% compared to the same period in 2019.

The second graph shows existing home sales Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA) by month (Red dashes are 2020), and the minimum and maximum for 2005 through 2019.

Sales NSA in October (573,000) were 24% above sales last year in October (462,000).  This was the all time high for October (NSA).