Yahoo Finance Live’s Julie Hyman breaks down February pending home sales data.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. I'm Julie Hyman with Brad Smith. We've got housing data out right now. Pending home sales, it looks like, rising 8/10 of 1% month over month. That's the third straight month it has seen an increase. And it looks like here it also came in better than estimated.
So analysts were looking for a drop of 3%. So got better than expected there. If you look across the different areas-- and this is something that has recently been examined I've seen in different maps and whatnot-- the Northeast, pending home sales up 6 and 1/2%, so seeing a lot of strength. In the middle of the country, in the South, seeing less than a percent gains, and the West falling 2.4%.
So there is now this growing sort of regional dichotomy here. Pending home sales in the Northeast doing well and everywhere else not doing so hot. We did see mortgage rates higher during last month, but they have since come down. Data this morning showing US mortgage rates going down to a six-week low of 6.45%. So maybe we will see these housing numbers continue to improve. We'll see.
