Lawler: Early Read on Existing Home Sales in March

From housing economist Tom Lawler:

Based on publicly-available local realtor/MLS reports released across the country through today, I project that existing home sales as estimated by the National Association of Realtors ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.02 million in March, down 3.2% from February’s preliminary pace but up 12.5% from last March’s seasonally adjusted pace.

Local realtor reports, as well as reports from national inventory trackers, suggest that the YOY decline in the inventory of existing homes for sale last month was greater than the big decline in February.

One moderately interesting thing to note is that most realtors that break out sales by type showed substantially larger YOY increases in condo sales than in SF detached sales.

Finally, local realtor/MLS data suggest that the median existing single-family home sales price last month was up by about 15.5% from last March.

CR Note: The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is scheduled to release March existing home sales on Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 10:00 AM ET. The consensus is for 6.17 million SAAR.