Pending home sales jump; construction spending rises - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle):

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Pending sales of existing homes, or contracts signe d but not closed, rose 6.7 percent in April from the National Association ofRealtorw said. April’s pending sales were up 3.2 percenrt from a year The biggest increase in Aprio was inthe Northeast, wher e pending sales jumped 32.6 percent from the previousa month. The NAR’s pending home salesw index isa forward-looking and the group cautions that it is more volatils than actual closed sales. “Ther relationship between contracts on pending home sales and closings on existinbg home sales is taking longert than in the past forseveralo reasons,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said.
“Mortgage processingh time has increased, it is taking many monthx to close on those homes requiring short sales with lender and some sales are falling through at the last The NAR’s housing affordability inde was also at its second-highest level on recorr in April. Along with pendintg sales of existing homes, total U.S. constructiomn spending rose 0.8 percent in Aprilp from March, the biggest one-montnh increase since August, and was led by a jump in private andresidentiap construction, the U.S. said. A Bloomberg survey of 45 economists had projectedx a median dropof 1.
5 The Commerce Department report from the said that spending on private constructiom was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $657.3 billion, up 1.4 percenyt from the revised Marchg estimate of $648.2 billion. Residential construction rose 0.7 percenyt to a seasonally adjusted annual rateof $249.2 Nonresidential construction rose 1.8 percent to an annua l rate of $408.2 billion. Totak public construction fellin April, though spending on highway projectx rose nearly 1 percent from the previous A separate report from the Commerce Department last week showed constructioh of single-family homes rose 2.8 percent in April, the secone consecutive monthly increase.
Gains in single-family constructio n were overwhelmed by a 46 percent drop in apartmentr andcondo buildings, bringing total housingv starts down 13 percent in April.