Pending home sales slipped in August as fewer Americans signed
contracts to purchase a house, the fourth decline in the past five
months.
The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that
its pending home sales index fell 1.8 percent last month to 104.2. This
measure of contract signings has tumbled 2.3 percent in the past year,
with the sharpest annual decline of 11.2 percent in the West where homes
generally cost more.
The recent setbacks suggest that the combination of rising prices,
higher mortgage rates and a limited number of sales listings are hurting
affordability.
In August contract signings slipped on a monthly basis in the four major geographic regions: Northeast, Midwest, South and West.
Pending sales are a barometer of home purchases that
are completed a month or two later. Over the past year, the completed
sales of existing homes have tumbled 1.5 percent.
The costs pressures caused by rising prices had been
minimized by historically low mortgage rates. But the average interest
charged on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 4.72 percent, the highest
since April 2011, according to the mortgage buyer Freddie Mac.
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