US Pending Home Sales Falls Off A Cliff In December

Pending Home Sales Index fell by 8.7% month-over-month compared to expectations of only a -0.5% decline. Pending home sales have now dropped every month since making a four year high in May. Unfortunately, weakness was across the entire country. The West leads the way down with pending sales down nearly 16% year-over-year. This does not know bode well for an already soft existing home sales series in January as pending home sales generally leads by a couple months.