Main market movements on September 22
The market sentiment remains risk-off amid rising virus cases around the world and fears over new restrictions and lockdowns.
American existing home sales are intact in August
In August, American home sales stood still, although inventory added for the first time for three years because the housing market kept struggling notwithstanding strength across the broader American economy.
As the National Association of Realtors informed, existing home sales didn’t change sticking with a seasonally updated annual rate of nearly 5.34 million units in August.
Apparently, it follows four consecutive months of dives. As a matter of fact, a lack of properties for sale has powered prices, thus sidelining a great number of would-be homeowners.
Besides this, supply has also been impacted by leaping building material costs, to say nothing of land and also labor shortages. As for ascending mortgage rates, they’re anticipated to speed down demand.
The key US financial institution is anticipated to have borrowing costs lifted by a quarter percentage point already next Wednesday after its latest interest-rate policy gathering. It would be the third such a lift in 2018.
Market experts surveyed by Reuters had predicted existing home sales adding by 0.3%. Evidently, existing home sales occupy nearly 90% of home sales in the United States.
Existing home sales inched down by 1.5% from 2017. Across the country’s four regions, sales added by 7.6% in the Northeast and there was a leap of 2.4% in the Midwest. Sales slumped by 5.9% in the West and also 0.4% in the South.
In August, there were up to 1.92 million homes on the market, which is a 2.7% jump from 2017. On a year-on-year basis it appeared to be the first inventory jump.
On Wednesday, data disclosed that in August housing starts added by 9.2% because groundbreaking on multifamily units headed north, although permits were lost 5.7%, which is the biggest slump since February last year.
At August's sales tempo, it would take up to 4.3 months to have the current inventory cleared, up from 4.1 months in 2017.
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