December Home Sales Down Slightly From November According To The Ten-X Residential Real Estate Nowcast

IRVINE, Calif. and SILICON VALLEY, Calif., Dec. 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ten-X, the nation's leading online real estate transaction marketplace, has released its latest Ten-X Residential Real Estate Nowcast which indicates a modest month-over-month decrease in December existing home sales. According to the nowcast, December sales will fall between seasonally adjusted annual rates of 5.33 and 5.69 million, with a targeted number of 5.51 million – down 1.8 percent from November, but up 0.9 percent from the year ago level.

"It's possible that we're seeing the effect of rising mortgage rates slowing down existing home sales," said Ten-X Executive Vice President Rick Sharga. "It's also possible that we may see the numbers trend upwards as buyers decide to enter the market before interest rates go even higher."

The National Association of Realtors® (NAR®) recently reported that November existing home sales increased to a seasonally adjusted rate (SAAR) of 5.61 million units in November, confirming the strength that the Ten-X Nowcast had previously indicated. This marks a 0.7 percent gain from its downwardly revised 5.57 million October estimate, a 15.4 percent year-over-year increase, and the highest annualized pace seen since February 2007.

"All things considered, 2016 has been a remarkably good year for both existing and new home sales," Sharga noted. "We've seen year-over-year sales increases despite home prices appreciating more rapidly than wage growth, tight credit and limited supply. Clearly, demand remains fairly strong."

The NAR also recently reported a 6.8 percent year-over-year increase in median existing home prices to $234,900 in November. This increase marked the 57^th consecutive month of annual gains and also confirmed the nowcast prediction made in November. The December Ten-X Residential Real Estate Nowcast predicts that median existing-home prices will fall between $221,679 and $245,013 in December with a target price point of $233,346, down 0.7 percent from November, but up 4.1 percent from a year ago.

"As we round out 2016, the U.S. housing market continues to benefit from a strong labor market, as solid job gains, low unemployment and promising wage growth fuel a high level of underlying demand for homes," said Ten-X Chief Economist Peter Muoio. "While there are still headwinds to sales growth in the way of tight inventory, low affordability and the likelihood of mortgage rate increases, solid fundamentals continue pointing to the overall health of the housing market."

About the Ten-X Residential Real Estate Nowcast Model

The Ten-X Residential Real Estate Nowcast combines industry data, proprietary company transactional data and Google search activity to predict market trends as they are occurring – weeks before the findings of other benchmark studies are released. Building upon the groundbreaking work by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian, Ten-X's nowcast model extends a traditional autoregressive-forecasting model to incorporate contemporaneous information that provides significantly enhanced accuracy.

Existing Home Sales

Existing Home Sales Pricing

About Ten-X

Ten-X is the nation's leading online real estate transaction marketplace and the parent to Ten-X Homes, Ten-X Commercial and Auction.com. To date, the company has sold 260,000+ residential and commercial properties totaling more than $43 billion. Leveraging desktop and mobile technology, Ten-X allows people to safely and easily complete real estate transactions online. Ten-X is headquartered in Irvine and Silicon Valley, Calif., and has offices in key markets nationwide. Investors in the company include CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) and Stone Point Capital. For more information, visit Ten-X.com.

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SOURCE Ten-X