• January existing home sales fell 1.3 percent from December but were up 9.6% from a year ago, to 5.46 million (SAAR), according to the National Association of Realtors.
• The median existing-home price for all housing types in January was $266,300, up 6.8% from January 2019. Prices were up year-over-year in every region.
• Total housing inventory at the end of January totaled 1.42 million units, up 2.2% from December but down 10.7% from one year ago.

The slight pullback in existing home sales in January from December should not diminish a key message as the 2020s begin in earnest: The housing market at the beginning of 2020 is in a much stronger position than it was at the beginning of 2019. A year ago, the housing market was hamstrung by a combination of a slumping stock market, mounting recession fears, surging mortgage interest rates and a prolonged government shutdown. The result was a slump in sales of existing homes. Fast-forward a year, and those conditions have all but evaporated. Today’s deepening shortage of inventory looks to be the biggest obstacle to a further liftoff in sales – it’s difficult to sell meaningfully more homes when there are simply so many fewer homes available to buy. But an aging millennial generation eager to jump into homeownership, steady wage growth and low mortgage interest rates all mean the existing sales market is likely to have more tailwinds than headwinds as we approach the busy spring home shopping months.