The National Association of Realtors leading indicator of future existing home sales stalled in February and the Realtors trimmed their sales forecast for 2013 again.
NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said the shortage of homes for sale is hurting sales.
“The volume of home sales appears to be leveling off with the constrained inventory conditions, and the leveling of the index means little change is likely in the pace of sales over the next couple months,” Yun said Wednesday morning.
NAR’s
The PSI is based on signed contracts, which usually translates into actual sales in a month or two.
Real estate professionals are expecting strong sales this spring so the slippage in the PSI indicator is disappointing.
NAR economists expect existing home sales will rise 7% this year. But they just trimmed their 2013 forecast to 4.99 million sales. A few months ago, the forecast called for 5.1 million sales.
The shortage of inventory is so severe that “new housing starts need to rise at least 50% from current levels” to relieve the shortage, Yun said.
However, most local builders are small businesses and they don’t have the access to credit and
