NAR: Housing on Track for 2nd-Best Year

The housing market is still on track for its second-best year on record, according to the National Association of Realtors.The NAR, which projected 5.34 million existing-home sales and 941,000 new-home sales for 2003 early in January, is now projecting 5.53 million resales and 956,000 new-home sales. Both numbers would rank second only to last year's 5.57 million and 974,000, the association said. "With most of the disruptions of unusual weather and war behind us, home sales should be fairly stable" this year, said David Lereah, the NAR's chief economist. The NAR is projecting that the 30-year fixed mortgage rate will rise to 6.3% by the end of the year (compared with the 7% it was forecasting in January) and that the gross domestic product will reach an annual growth rate of 3.9% in the third quarter, while averaging 2.3% for the year. The NAR can be found on the Internet at http://realtor.org.