Existing home sales slip in October

Existing-home sales fell 3.4% in October, a month that saw a substantially larger drop in housing starts.

October's seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.36 million simply wasn't enough to keep up with September's strong surge of 5.55 million. However, last month's activity was still up 3.9% year-over-year.

Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, attributed the decrease due to a pullback in contract signings over the last couple of months.

"New and existing-home supply has struggled to improve so far this fall, leading to few choices for buyers and no easement of the ongoing affordability concerns still prevalent in some markets," he said. "Furthermore, the mixed signals of slowing economic growth and volatility in the financial markets slightly tempered demand and contributed to the decreasing pace of sales."

Home prices continued their steady track of year-over-year gains, with the median existing-home price of $219,600 marking a 5.8% improvement over the year prior.

Total housing inventory was down, however, by 2.3% to 2.14 million existing homes available for sale -- that's 4.5% lower than a year ago.

For the single-family market, home sales were down 3.7% to a rate of 4.75 million in October, down from 4.93  million in September but up 4.6% year-over-year. The median single-family home price was $221,200, up 6.3% year-over-year.

Regionally, changes in home sale activity were negligible in the Northeast and Midwest (unchanged and down 0.8%, respectively). In the South, sales were down 3.2%, and sales in the West fell most drastically at 8.7%.

"As long as solid job creation continues, a gradual easing of credit standards even with moderately higher mortgage rates should support steady demand and sales continuing to rise above a year ago," said Yun.