Home sales improve nationally in December
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Home sales rose nationally in December, marking the third consecutive month that the market has shown improvement.
Previously owned homes were sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.61 million units, up 5% from November and 3.6% from December 2010, the National Assn. of Realtors said Friday.
“The market for single-family homes picked up in the second half of 2011, after being stuck near the bottom for nearly three years,” Patrick Newport, an economist with IHS Global Insight, wrote in a note to clients. “This pickup is real, but the road to recovery will be a slow one.”
About 1 in 3 homes sold last month was a so-called distressed sale, either a foreclosure or a short sale, the latter involving a bank allowing a home to be sold for less than the outstanding debt on the property. Roughly 1 in 3 homes was purchased using cash.
The nation’s housing inventory dropped 9.2% from the previous month to 2.38 million homes available for sale. That represents a supply of six months and a little less than a week. Economists consider about six months of supply to be a stable market.
Existing-home sales for all of 2011 inched up 1.7% to 4.26 million from 4.19 million the year before.
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