US Home Sales Rise 5.5%, Signaling a Possible Bottom...
Sales of existing homes rose 5.5% in September, a real estate trade group said, offering a glimmer of hope that the housing slump may be starting to bottom.
The National Association of Realtors said the rise in September from the month before was the best showing since July 2003, during the five-year housing boom.
Even with the gain in sales, prices kept falling. The median sales price has dropped to $191,600, down by 9 percent from a year ago.
The report came a day after the Federal Housing Finance Agency said US home prices fell 0.6 percent in August versus July.
The drop, however, was slightly less than the 0.8 percent fall in July, which is perhaps a glimmer of hope for the hard-hit U.S. housing market as it may indicate that the precipitous drop in home prices could be abating.
A huge supply of unsold homes, tighter lending standards and record foreclosures have pushed down home prices.
For the 12 months ending in August, U.S. home prices fell 5.9 percent, and the cumulative decline since the April 2007 peak is 6.5 percent, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency's House Price Index.
By region, seasonally adjusted monthly price changes ranged from a decline of 1.8 percent in the Pacific Division states of Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California to an increase of 0.4 percent in the New England states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, the report said.
The FHFA monthly index, formerly called the OFHEO monthly house price index, is calculated using purchase prices of houses backing mortgages that have been sold to or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.
FHFA regulates Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks.The index was introduced in the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's fourth quarter 2007 House Price Index, or HPI, report and has shown less severe price declines than other reports.
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