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• Pending Home Sales Decline

Pending home sales fell in August, but remain at a pace that puts them well ahead of last year, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has reported.

Signed contracts for home purchases in August were down a seasonally adjusted 2.6 percent from the previous month, according to today's figures from the NAR. At the same time, they remain 10.7 percent ahead of their August 2011 level.

Pending sales have generally followed a seesaw pattern since late winter, rising one month while falling the next, all while remaining ahead of their pace of the previous year. August was the 16 ^th consecutive month in which pending sales showed an improvement over their pace of 12 months before.

Shortages of lower-priced homes for sale

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, attributed the ongoing volatility at least in part to shortages of lower-priced homes in many markets and across all price ranges in much of the West. An ongoing issue has been that many homeowners who normally would be interested in selling their homes are unable to because they are underwater on their mortgages.

The NAR report comes one day after the Census Bureau reported that sales of newly built homes in August were down a seasonally adjusted 0.3 percent from their July level, while showing an annual gain of 27.7 percent from their August 2011 level.

The NAR is projecting that sales of existing homes will show a 9 percent gain in 2012, to a level of 4.64 million units, followed by an 8 percent increase 5.02 million in 2013. Home prices are predicted to show an increase of about 5 percent each year.

First published on MortgageLoan.com at: http://www.mortgageloan.com/pending-home-sales-decline-9252

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