Sales of previously owned homes in the United States rose more than expected in December to the strongest in nearly three years, on the back of lower mortgage rates, industry data showed Wednesday.
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Existing home sales jumped by 5.1 percent from the prior month, reaching a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.35 million units, said the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
Month-on-month sales rose across all regions, the report added.
The pace was higher than the 4.22 million rate that surveys of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal expected.
It was also an improvement over November’s figure, and marked the best activity since February 2023, said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun in a call.
Market conditions began looking up in the fourth quarter last year, with lower mortgage rates and slower home price growth, said Yun in a statement.
This came as the popular 30-year fixed-rate mortgage cooled in December to around 6.2 percent.
But Yun warned that “inventory levels remain tight,” adding that homeowners are not in a rush to list or delist their homes.
“Similar to past years, more inventory is expected to come to market beginning in February,” he said.
The median sales price across housing types was $405,400, still up 0.4 percent from a year ago.