US home sales fell in November, the 10th consecutive month

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes slowed for the tenth month in a row in November, constrained by a tight inventory of properties on the market and mortgage rates averaging more than double what they were a year ago

Home Sales (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes slowed for the tenth consecutive in November, constrained by a tight inventory of properties on the market and mortgage rates averaging more than double what they were a year ago.

Existing home sales fell 7.7% last month from October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.09 million, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday. That’s lower than what economists had expected, according to FactSet.

Sales plunged 35.4% from November last year. Excluding the steep slowdown in sales that occurred in May 2020 at the start of the pandemic, sales are now at the slowest annual pace since October 2010, when the housing market was mired in a deep slump following the foreclosure crisis of the late 2000s.

Despite the slowdown, home prices continued to climb in November, though at a far smaller rate than just a few months ago. The national median home sales price rose 3.5% in November from a year earlier to $370,700.

The inventory of homes on the market declined for the fourth consecutive month. Some 1.14 million homes were on the market by the end of November. That amounts to a 3.3 months’ supply at the current sales pace.