From the NY Times:
Realtors’ Index Shows Dip for Existing-Home Sales
Pending home sales dipped in November, a trade group for real estate agents said on Tuesday, but the association expects sales to pick up in the second half of 2008.
In the latest indication that the housing market’s struggles are not over, the National Association of Realtors said on Tuesday that its seasonally adjusted index of pending sales for existing homes fell 2.6 percent to a reading of 87.6 from an upwardly revised 89.9 in October.
Analysts warned of continued problems in the housing market.
“The best thing you can say about pending home sales is that they aren’t getting much worse,” Michael D. Larson, a real estate analyst at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Fla., said in a statement. But with the labor market weakening, “you have the recipe for ongoing trouble in housing.”
In a speech on Tuesday, the chief executive of the mortgage finance company Fannie Mae, Daniel H. Mudd, said home prices would “perhaps begin to gain modestly” in 2010.
The Realtors index, which was down 19.2 percent from a year ago, hit a record low of 85.5 in August at the peak of the worldwide credit squeeze.
Typically there is a one- to two-month lag between the time that a buyer signs a home sales contract and the closing of the deal. So the November reading should reflect sales that were completed last month and into this month.
An index reading of 100 is equal to the average level of sales activity in 2001, when the index started.
Final results for existing-home sales in 2007 — to be released this month — are expected to be down 12.7 percent from 6.48 million in 2006, the Realtors group said.