Pending Home Sales Number - Inventory Correlation

The National Association of Realtors reported pending home resales today.

The index of signed purchase agreements, or pending home resales, fell 3.2 percent to 101.4, the lowest since February 2003, after a revised 4.5 percent decline in March, the National Association of Realtors said today in Washington.

Rising mortgage defaults are putting more houses back on the market and prompting banks to tighten lending standards, making home purchases less affordable. Federal Reserve policy makers are forecasting that the glut of unsold homes will probably prolong the housing slump, already the deepest in a decade and a half.

``We've still got a very big overhang of home inventory,'' said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts. ``A housing recovery won't happen this year.''

This helps to account for the large and growing inventory numbers Hardtack is showing, as of June 1st we are up to:

Single Family: 1,928,568
Multi Family: 125,144
Condo: 525,762
Land: 513,773