Following the plunge in existing, and new home sales in September, pending home sales, were expected to be unchanged, but printed a small 0.5% MoM gain (against downwardly revised August data).

However, pending home sales dropped 3.4% YoY (on non-adjusted data), the 10th annual decline in the last 11 months…

The advance was led by a 4.5 percent gain in the West, while the Midwest posted a 1.2 percent increase, Northeast slid 0.4 percent while South was down 1.4 percent.

Pending Home Sales SAAR is hovering just above 4 year lows…

Realtors remain hopeful at this tiny rebound…

“This shows that buyers are out there on the sidelines, waiting to jump in once more inventory becomes available and the price is right,” Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, said in a statement.

“Though affordability has been falling recently, the demand for housing should remain steady”.

With homebuilder stocks at their lowest since Feb 2017 and aggregate US housing data collapsing at a pace not seen since 2008, we suspect President Trump’s view on rates is more appropriate than Jay Powell’s for now if one were to ask the nation’s realtors and homeowners…