national association of realtors predicting late 2020 upturn

Although home sales across the country dipped dramatically last month, the principle analyst for the Washington-based National Association of Realtors says the picture for the rest of the year is looking promising.

“Home sales will surely rise in the upcoming months with the economy reopening,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist with the organization, has commented in a statement, “and could even surpass one year-ago figures in the second half of the year.”

That rise will come in the wake of a nearly 10 percent decline in the sale of single-family homes, town homes, and condominiums between April and May.

But because new home construction is back on pace throughout the country, with realtors reporting a minimal slowdown in demand, homes sales are expected to “rise in the coming months with the economy reopening,” said Yun.

The economist added:  “New home construction needs to robustly ramp up in order to meet rising housing demand.”

The organization’s most recent national home sales survey showed that, as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak this spring, every region of the country saw a dip in activity, with sales in the Northeast for houses priced between under $100,000 to $250,000 off by around 44 percent.

The decline in the sales in the West in that same category was off by some 40 percent.

Interestingly, the two largest dips nationally were at both ends of the pricing scale, with homes priced below $100,000 seeing a 33 percent sales decline, while properties listed between $750,000 and $1 million were off by 38 percent.

The smallest decline, at 27 percent, was recorded in the $250,000 to $500,000 category.
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Those numbers, said Yun, reflect “contract signings in March and April—during the strictest times of the pandemic lockdown and hence the cyclical low point.”

​By Garry Boulard

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