This morning’s release of the September Existing-Home Sales was down from the previous month’s revised figure to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.15 million units. The Investing.com consensus was for 5.30 million. The latest number represents a 3.4% decrease from the previous month and a 4.1% decrease year-over-year.

Here is an excerpt from today’s report from the National Association of Realtors.

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, says rising interest rates have led to a decline in sales across all regions of the country. “This is the lowest existing home sales level since November 2015,” he said. “A decade’s high mortgage rates are preventing consumers from making quick decisions on home purchases. All the while, affordable home listings remain low, continuing to spur underperforming sales activity across the country”. [Full Report]

For a longer-term perspective, here is a snapshot of the data series, which comes from the National Association of Realtors. The data since January 1999 was previously available in the St. Louis Fed’s FRED repository and is now only available from January 2018. It can be found here.

Over this time frame, we clearly see the Real Estate Bubble, which peaked in 2005 and then fell dramatically. Sales were volatile for the first year or so following the Great Recession.

The Population-Adjusted Reality

Now let’s examine the data with a simple population adjustment. The Census Bureau’s mid-month population estimates show an 18.3% increase in the US population since the turn of the century. The snapshot below is an overlay of the NAR’s annualized estimates with a population-adjusted version.

Existing-home sales are 1.5% below the NAR’s January 2000 estimate. The population-adjusted version is 15.8% below the turn-of-the-century sales.

Existing-Home Sales Median Prices for Single Family Homes

We’ve added a chart for the last 12 months of Existing-home sales median prices for single-family homes for reference.