Today, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their Pending Home Sales Report for April showing that pending home sales improved with the seasonally adjusted national index climbing 0.3% from March and increasing 10.3% above the level seen in April 2012.
Meanwhile, the NARs chief economist Lawrence Yun is suggests that gaining sales and tight inventory should work to continue to push up home prices:
"The housing market continues to squeak out gains from already very positive conditions. Pending contracts so far this year easily correspond to higher closed home sales in 2013, ... Because of inventory shortages, higher home sales will push up home values to the highest level in five years,"
The following chart shows the seasonally adjusted national pending home sales index along with the percent change on a year-over-year basis as well as the percent change from the peak set in 2005 (click for larger version).
