Pending home sales jump; construction spending rises - Philadelphia Business Journal:

ogarawo.wordpress.com
Pending sales of existing homes, or contractd signed but not closed, rose 6.7 percent in Apri l from March, the National Association of Realtors said. April’zs pending sales were up 3.2 percenf from a year earlier. The biggest increase in April was in the where pending salesjumped 32.6 percent from the previouz month. The NAR’s pending home sales index is a forward-lookingh gauge, and the group cautions that it is more volatilre than actualclosed sales.
“The relationship between contractes on pending home sales and closinges on existing home sales is taking longer than in the past forseveralk reasons,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun “Mortgage processing time has increased, it is taking many monthx to close on those homes requiring shor t sales with lender approval, and some saleas are falling through at the last The NAR’s housing affordability index was also at its second-highestf level on record in Along with pending sales of existing total U.S. construction spending rose 0.
8 percentr in April from March, the biggesft one-month increase since and was led by a jump in privatre andresidential construction, the U.S. said. A Bloombergf survey of 45 economists had projected a median dropof 1.5 percent. The Commerce Department report from the said that spendinyg on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annuapl rateof $657.3 billion, up 1.4 percen from the revised March estimate of $648.2 billion. Residential construction rose 0.7 percenft to a seasonally adjusted annual rateof $249.w billion. Nonresidential construction rose 1.8 percenft to an annual rate of $408.2 billion.
Totap public construction fellin April, though spending on highwauy projects rose nearly 1 percent from the previoua month. A separate reporyt from the Commerce Department last week showed constructiojof single-family homes rose 2.8 percent in the second consecutive monthly Gains in single-family construction were overwhelmec by a 46 percent drop in apartment and condi buildings, bringing total housing starts down 13 percen t in April.