China News Agency, Washington, December 21 (Reporter Sha Hanting) The National Association of Realtors (National Association of Realtors) released data on the 21st local time, showing that the sales of existing homes in the United States fell by 7.7% month-on-month in November, the 10th consecutive year. month declined.
Data show that US existing home sales in November were 4.09 million units at an annual rate, a decrease of 35.4% from the same period last year.
The sales volume is the lowest since November 2010, except for the outlier in May 2020 due to the epidemic.
In terms of prices, the median price of existing homes in November was $370,700, a year-on-year increase of 3.5%.
In terms of inventory, there were 1.14 million homes for sale at the end of November, which has declined for 4 consecutive months.
At the current sales pace, it would take 3.3 months to sell all the homes on the market.
In a market with balanced supply and demand, it typically takes 5 to 6 months to sell all the homes on the market.
Lawrence Yun (Lawrence Yun), chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, said that the current U.S. real estate market presents a "strange" situation, with few home buyers and few housing transactions, but due to insufficient inventory, housing sales are still fast .
The current average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage has risen to 6.31%, from about 3% in January, according to data from US housing finance agency Freddie Mac.
Experts generally believe that the Federal Reserve's continuous interest rate hikes to push up mortgage rates are the most important factor affecting housing sales, especially for first-time home buyers.
According to statistics, first-time home buyers only account for 28% of the total number of home buyers, which is lower than the normal level of 40%.
The Fed has raised interest rates seven times this year.
On the 14th of this month, the Federal Reserve raised the target range of the federal funds rate by 50 basis points to a level of 4.25% to 4.5%.
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