US home sales remained sluggish in August despite late-summer mortgage rate slide
By ALEX VEIGA, Associated Press Business Writer
Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes remained sluggish in August, even as a late-summer slide in mortgage rates brought home loan borrowing costs to a 10-month low.
Existing home sales slipped 0.2% last month from July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4 million units, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. That’s the slowest sales pace since June.
Sales rose 1.8% compared with August last year. The latest sales figure topped the 3.96 million pace economists were expecting, according to FactSet.
The national median sales price increased 2% in August from a year earlier to $422,600. That’s the 26th consecutive month that home prices have risen on an annual basis.
The U.S. housing market has been in a sales slump since 2022, when mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes sank last year to their lowest level in nearly 30 years.
Mortgage rates have been mostly declining since late July ahead of the Federal Reserve’s widely anticipated decision last week to cut its main interest rate for the first time in a year amid growing concern over the U.S. job market.
The pullback in mortgage rates has given home shoppers more purchasing power, but rates remain too high for many Americans to afford to buy a home following years of skyrocketing home prices.
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