{"id":303455,"date":"2025-11-20T15:54:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T15:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/303455\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T15:54:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T15:54:12","slug":"october-existing-home-sales-see-small-gain-but-supply-is-dropping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/303455\/","title":{"rendered":"October existing home sales see small gain, but supply is dropping"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Existing<\/p>\n

Improvement in mortgage rates at the end of the summer boosted home sales, but that gain may be short-lived.<\/p>\n

Sales of previously owned homes in October rose 1.2% from September to 4.1 million units on a seasonally adjusted, annualized basis, according to the National Association of Realtors. Sales were up 1.7% year over year. <\/p>\n

This count is based on home closings, so contracts likely signed in August and September. While contract signings would not be impacted by the government shutdown<\/a> that started in October, closings, especially those requiring flood insurance or government-backed rural home loans, could be.<\/p>\n

During that contract-signing period, the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage<\/a> came down for a bit but then moved up again. The popular 30-year rate started August at 6.63%, fell steadily to 6.13% by mid-September, and then came back up to 6.37% by the end of the month, according to Mortgage News Daily<\/a>. It now stands<\/a> at 6.36%.<\/p>\n

The inventory of homes for sale has also come down. After gaining for much of this year, supply fell to 1.52 million units, down 0.7% from September, although still nearly 11% higher than a year earlier. At the current sales pace, there is a 4.4-month supply, still considered lean.<\/p>\n

Get Property Play directly to your inbox<\/p>\n

CNBC’s Property Play with Diana Olick covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, delivered weekly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

Subscribe here to get access today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And that’s why prices are still gaining.<\/a> The median price of a home sold in October was $415,200, an increase of 2.1% from October 2024 and the 28th consecutive month of annual gains. <\/p>\n

“Looking ahead, home shoppers in today’s market face some advantages from falling mortgage rates and seasonally slower competition,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, in a release. “At the same time, a lack of housing affordability continues to be a challenge keeping home sales in their historically low level.”<\/p>\n

Homes are staying on the market longer, at an average of 34 days last month compared with 29 days last October. <\/p>\n

First-time buyers made a comeback in the market, representing 32% of sales, up from 27% a year ago \u2014 but not all regions are equal. <\/p>\n

“First-time homebuyers are facing headwinds in the Northeast due to a lack of supply and in the West because of high home prices,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors. “First-time buyers fared better in the Midwest because of the plentiful supply of affordable houses and in the South because there is sufficient inventory.”<\/p>\n

Sales growth continues to be strongest on the high end of the market. Homes priced above $1 million saw sales up more than 16% from a year ago, and those priced between $750,000 and $1 million saw a gain of 10%. Meanwhile sales of homes priced between $100,000 and $250,000 were up just about 1%, and homes priced below $100,000 saw a drop in sales of nearly 3%. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Improvement in mortgage rates at the end of the summer boosted home sales, but that gain may be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[448,28,122,2053,9399,1170],"class_list":["post-303455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-breaking-news-business","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-housing","tag-mortgages","tag-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}