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

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Pending sales of existing homes, or contracts signedd but not closed, rose 6.7 percent in April from March, the Nationap Association of Realtors April’s pending sales were up 3.2 percen t from a year earlier. The biggest increasre in April was inthe Northeast, where pendinv sales jumped 32.6 percent from the previousz month. The NAR’s pending home sales index is a forward-looking and the group cautions that it is more volatils than actualclosed sales. “The relationship between contractxs on pending home sales and closings on existing home sales is taking longer than in the past forseverap reasons,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrences Yun said.
“Mortgage processing time has increased, it is takingt many months to close on those homesz requiring short sales withlender approval, and some salees are falling through at the last moment.” The NAR’sa housing affordability index was also at its second-highest leve l on record in April. Alon g with pending sales of existintg homes, total U.S. construction spending rose 0.8 percent in Aprilo from March, the biggest one-month increase sincr August, and was led by a jump in privatew andresidential construction, the U.S. said. A Bloombergy survey of 45 economist s had projected a median dropof 1.
5 The Commerce Department report from the said that spending on privatr construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $657.3 up 1.4 percent from the revised Marchh estimate of $648.2 billion. Residential construction rose 0.7 percenty to a seasonally adjusted annual rateof $249.2 Nonresidential construction rose 1.8 percent to an annual rate of $408.w billion. Total public construction fellin April, though spending on highway projects rose nearly 1 percent from the previou s month. A separate report from the Commercse Department last week showed constructionof single-family homes rose 2.8 perceny in April, the secondx consecutive monthly increase.
Gains in single-family construction were overwhelmefd by a 46 percengt drop in apartment and condo bringing total housing starts down 13 percenttin April.