The housing bust continues: Sales of existing homes at lowest pace on record and prices drop more than 4%.
By Jessica Dickler, CNNMoney.com staff writer
October 24 2007: 12:17 PM EDT
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Existing home sales sank 8 percent last month, to the lowest pace on record, according to the latest reading on the state of the battered real estate market released Wednesday.
Sales of existing homes slowed to an annual pace of 5.04 million in September, compared with a revised 5.48 million sales pace in August, the National Association of Realtors said.
Last month’s numbers mark the slowest annual pace of sales since the current measure – which includes multiple-family dwellings – began in 1999. It is also the steepest one-month and annual drops on record.
“It looks like we didn’t have to wait until Halloween to get ghoulish data,” according to Mike Larson, a real estate analyst with Weiss Research.
“Clearly September was a dismal month,” he said.
Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast that sales would slow to a 5.25 million pace.
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http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/24/news/economy/homesales/?postversion=2007102411
