LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 The latest sign of trouble in the U.S. housing market: A pickup in home purchase agreements falling through before they\u2019re finalized.<\/p>\n
Some 6% of pending contracts to buy a home were canceled in May, down from 7% in April, but up from 5% in May last year, according to data from National Association of Realtors. May is the third consecutive month with an annual increase in pending home sales cancelations.<\/p>\n
A separate analysis of housing data by Redfin found that 14.6% of all pending sales in May fell out of contract, up from 14% in May last year, and the highest cancelation percentage for the month of May going back to at least 2017.<\/p>\n
The trend underscores how even home shoppers who manage to ink a deal with a seller can end up having to back out because of unexpected costs, changes in their credit, employment or financial status, or a low appraisal, among other reasons. <\/p>\n
\u201cStock market fluctuations, restrained consumer confidence and broader economic and geopolitical uncertainties may be leading to higher-than-normal cancellations rates in recent months,\u201d said Lawrence Yun, NAR\u2019s chief economist.<\/p>\n
The U.S. housing market remains in a sales slump<\/a> going back to 2022, as elevated mortgage rates<\/a> and rising home prices nationally keep pushing the cost of homeownership well beyond what many would-be homebuyers can afford. <\/p>\n While sales of previously occupied U.S. homes in May remained at the slowest pace since 2009, pending U.S. home sales rose 1.8% from the previous month and increased 1.1% from May last year, NAR said Thursday.<\/p>\n A home sale is listed as pending when the purchase contract has been signed but the transaction has not closed. There\u2019s usually a month or two lag between a contract signing and when the sale is finalized, which makes pending home sales a bellwether for future completed home sales.<\/p>\n A snapshot by Redfin of pending U.S. home sales for the four weeks that ended June 22, shows they fell 2.3% from a year earlier, the biggest drop in three months.<\/p>\n Economists at mortgage buyer Fannie Mae revised their outlook for existing U.S. home sales this week, citing expectations that the average rate on a 30-year mortgage will end this year at 6.5%.<\/p>\n Fannie Mae now expects existing U.S. home sales will rise 2% this year to 4.14 million. The economists\u2019 previously forecast the sale of 4.24 million homes. Still, they project home sales will jump 9.5% in 2026 on the back of mortgage rates easing to 6.1%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 The latest sign of trouble in the U.S. housing market: A pickup in home…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3091],"tags":[51,474,86630,3663,22057,4179,86628,2441,86629,86631,7143,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-219521","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-finance-business","11":"tag-financial-markets","12":"tag-financial-performance","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-lawrence-yun","15":"tag-markets","16":"tag-national-association-of-realtors","17":"tag-redfin-corp","18":"tag-u-s-news","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114757267131313704","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}