Another 20% MoM drop in the market?

According to february publicly-available local realtor/MLS reports, the existing home sales ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.51 million, which is up 12.75% from January but down 23.8% from last February’s seasonally adjusted pace. The Northeast and West regions saw the largest YoY % decline in sales on an unadjusted basis, while the Midwest and South regions had the smallest decline.

Moreover, local realtor reports and national inventory trackers suggest that the inventory of existing homes for sale last month increased substantially from a year earlier. However, it’s not certain that the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) estimate will show the same increase since most of the reports exclude listings with pending contracts, while the NAR’s estimate appears to include such listings. Nonetheless, the local realtor/MLS reports suggest that the median existing single-family home sales price was up by about 1.3% from last February, while the median existing SF home sales price in the West region was down by about 5% YoY.

California’s existing, single-family home sales totaled 284,010 in February on a seasonally adjusted annualized rate, up 17.6% from January and down 33.2% from February 2022. Meanwhile, the statewide median home price was $735,480, down 2.1% from January and down 4.8% from February 2022. Even though sales of existing single-family homes in California improved for the third straight month, they remained below the 300,000-unit pace for the fifth consecutive month.

In addition, the active listings in these markets were down 18% YoY in February a year ago and are now up 85% YoY, which is a significant change from early 2022. Lastly, new listings in these markets were down 16.5% YoY, indicating that potential sellers locked into their current homes with low mortgage rates have pushed down new listings.