{"id":863043,"date":"2026-08-18T23:08:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/863043\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T23:08:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:08:21","slug":"pending-home-sales-drop-to-2nd-lowest-on-record-plunge-to-record-low-in-the-west-to-near-record-low-in-the-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/863043\/","title":{"rendered":"Pending Home Sales Drop to 2nd Lowest on Record, Plunge to Record Low in the West, to Near-Record Low in the South"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t Stuck in the mud at the bottom for a 4th year, after the 2020-2022 home-price explosion.
\nBy\u00a0Wolf Richter<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0WOLF STREET<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pending sales of existing homes dropped another 2.3% in July from June, seasonally adjusted, to the second-lowest on record, a position shared with July 2024. The record low in the data occurred in January this year.<\/p>\n

Compared to the already stuck-in-the-mud levels in July a year ago, sales dropped by 2.2%, according to data from the National Association of Realtors today, whose \u201cpending sales\u201d data only goes back to July 2010 (its \u201cclosed sales\u201d data goes back to the 1980s). Sales declined in all regions, but plunged in the West to record lows and fell sharply in the South and Northeast.<\/p>\n

Compared to July 2021, pending sales have collapsed by 36%, compared to 2020 by 41%, and compared to the Julys in 2018 and 2019 by 33%. Compared to July 2010 during the big bad Housing Bust, sales are down by 9%.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The housing market is now in the process of completing the fourth year that sales have remained mostly below the lows of the Housing Bust, stuck deeply in the mud at the bottom, after the home-price explosion from mid-2020 through mid-2022, and now amid\u00a0the highest supply of existing single-family homes in 10 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The NAR\u2019s metric of pending home sales tracks contracts that were signed in July but that haven\u2019t closed yet and could still get canceled for whatever reason. The rate of cancellations has been running high.<\/p>\n

Pending home sales are a preview of what is coming in terms of closed home sales.<\/p>\n

Pending home sales by region.<\/p>\n

A map of the four Census Regions is posted at the top of the comments below.<\/p>\n

In the West,\u00a0pending sales plunged by 7.7% in July from June, seasonally adjusted, to a new record low in the data.<\/p>\n

Compared to July in prior years:<\/p>\n

2025: -7.1% (year-over-year)
\n2024: -8.2%
\n2023: -11.9%
\n2022: -25.0%
\n2021:\u00a0-47.4%
\n2019: -43.9%.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the South,\u00a0pending sales dropped by 2.2% month-to-month, seasonally adjusted, with only three other months being as low or lower.<\/p>\n

Compared to July in prior years:<\/p>\n

2025: -3.0% (year-over-year)
\n2024: +0.5% (second-lowest month on record).
\n2023: -9.9%
\n2022: -20.6%
\n2021:\u00a0-36.2%
\n2019:\u00a0-32.2%.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the Northeast,\u00a0pending sales fell by 2.0% month-to-month, seasonally adjusted.<\/p>\n

Compared to July in prior years:<\/p>\n

2025: -0.2% (year-over-year)
\n2024: -0.3%
\n2023: +2.2%
\n2022: -18.6%
\n2021:\u00a0-31.2%
\n2019:\u00a0-30.7%.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the Midwest,\u00a0pending sales declined by 0.7% month-to-month, after the 8.9% plunge in the prior month, seasonally adjusted.<\/p>\n

Compared to July in prior years:<\/p>\n

2025: +1.7% (year-over-year)
\n2024: +5.8%
\n2023: -4.2%
\n2022: -20.6%
\n2021:\u00a0-30.4%
\n2019:\u00a0-26.2%.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mortgage rates\u00a0in July were in the 6.4% to 6.7% range, according to Freddie Mac\u2019s average weekly mortgage rate data. Mortgage rates have been in this range since September 2022.<\/p>\n

In the decades before 2009, before the Fed\u2019s QE and zero-interest-rate policy began to distort the markets, mortgage rates were about as high or much higher than today. These are fairly normal mortgage rates in a historical context. They\u2019re not too high. What\u2019s too high is inflation. The housing market \u2013 buyers, sellers, and the entire industry in between \u2013 needs to get used to those rates.<\/p>\n

These mortgage rates are only high in the context of the QE-era when the Fed \u201cprinted\u201d trillions of dollars to purchase trillions of dollars of Treasury securities and MBS in order to repress interest rates and mortgage rates, and thereby inflate asset prices and home prices, eventually triggering the worst consumer-price inflation in 40 years and the worst home-price explosion on record. As a result, home prices have overshot what the market can bear, have inflated homeowners\u2019 insurance premiums and other carrying costs that sap consumer spending elsewhere, and have become a liability for the housing market and for the economy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In case you missed it:\u00a0Sales of Existing Single-Family Homes Sink Deeper into Mud, Supply Jumps to 10-Year High, Condo Supply at 14-Year High<\/a><\/p>\n

Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? You can donate. I appreciate it immensely. Click on the mug to find out how:<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stuck in the mud at the bottom for a 4th year, after the 2020-2022 home-price explosion. By\u00a0Wolf Richter\u00a0for\u00a0WOLF…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":863044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":["post-863043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}