September Existing Home Sales To Recover Slowly From August's Lackluster Performance According To Auction.com Real Estate Nowcast

IRVINE and SILICON VALLEY, Calif., Sept. 29, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Auction.com, LLC, the nation's leading online real estate marketplace, has released its latest Auction.com Real Estate Nowcast which projects that existing home sales for the month of September will fall between seasonally adjusted annual rates of 5.23 and 5.57 million annual sales, with a targeted number of 5.4 million – up 1.7 percent from August and 5.9 percent from a year ago.

Earlier this month, the National Association of Realtors® (NAR®) released its existing home sales data for August, reporting an unexpectedly large 4.8 percent drop in home sales to 5.31 million units, the second largest decline in more than four years. While the modest growth that the Auction.com Real Estate Nowcast predicts for September will not be enough to completely recoup all of the losses experienced in August, it shows that sales are expected to move back in the right direction and maintain solid year-over-year progress.

"While we reported signs last month that the housing market was cooling off, no one anticipated the kind of decline in sales volume that we saw in August," said Auction.com Executive Vice President Rick Sharga. "Some of this could be due to the severe volatility we saw in the stock market, some could be less activity from foreign buyers due to economic issues in Europe and China, and some could be the result of job losses in oil-producing states. Since month-to-month sales numbers can vary significantly, this could turn out to be nothing more than a temporary blip on the radar, but it's certainly worth watching."

"Despite weaker than anticipated sales activity in August, housing remains strong, with sales up 6.2 percent from a year ago," said Auction.com Chief Economist Peter Muoio. "All the right underpinnings are in place to support continued demand, from improving labor markets and wage growth to a more approachable lending environment. That said, we're expecting growth to assume a much more modest pace as we approach the end of 2015."

Home prices have also slipped recently on a seasonally adjusted basis, but remain healthy according to Auction.com's findings. NAR reported a 4.7 percent year-over-year increase in median existing home prices August to $228,700 – close to the median price of $230,666 that Auction.com predicted last month. Findings from the Auction.com Real Estate Nowcast suggest that sales prices for existing homes will fall between $216,372 and $239,148 in the month of September, with a targeted price of $227,760. This represents an 8.9 percent year-over-year increase.

About the Auction.com Real Estate Nowcast Model

The Auction.com Real Estate Nowcast combines industry data, proprietary company transactional data and Google search activity to predict market trends as they are occurring – weeks before the findings of other benchmark studies are released. Building upon the groundbreaking work by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian, Auction.com's nowcast model extends a traditional autoregressive-forecasting model to incorporate contemporaneous information that provides significantly enhanced accuracy.

Auction.com will occasionally update its nowcast as fresh data provides additional signals for current home sales activity. The Auction.com Real Estate Nowcast model has proven highly accurate over the course of 2014 and into 2015.

Existing Home Sales

Sources: Google, NAR, Auction.com

Existing Home Sales Pricing

Sources: Google, NAR, Auction.com

About Auction.com:  
Auction.com, LLC, is the nation's leading online real estate marketplace. Founded in 2007, the company has sold more than $32 billion in residential and commercial real estate assets. Auction.com has over 900 employees and headquarters in Irvine and Silicon Valley, California, as well as offices in key markets nationwide. Visit www.auction.com for more information.

SOURCE Auction.com, LLC

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