Existing Home Sales Take Largest Drop in 40 Years!

home sales

The National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales plunged 16.7% last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.45 million units. Analysts had expected the December sales rate to hit 5.9 million annual units. The 16.7% drop was the largest one month drop in existing home sales in 40 years!

For all of 2009 there were 5,156,000 existing-home sales, which was 4.9% higher than 2008’s total. That was the first annual sales gain since 2005.

In November, the planned tax credit expiration helped existing home sales gain 7.4% — and that followed a 10% surge the previous month.

“It’s significant that home sales remain above year-ago levels, but the market is going through a period of swings driven by the tax credit,” NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said in a press release.

The good news from this report, for San Diego real estate was the fact that the West fared the best of all regions, but sales there still fell 4.8% to an annual level of 1.38 million; sales in the South sank 16.3% to 2.01 million; and the Northeast fell 19.5% to 910,000.

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