Home sales

days faster than in the same month last year. The NAR said more than twothirds of homes sold in July had been on the market for less than a month.

Economists say the aggressive buying reflects, in part, pent-up demand from the spring, when the usual surge in sales was blocked by the coronavirus outbreak.

“A lot of people are making up ground for the lost spring home-buying season,” said Odeta Kushi, an economist at First American, a title insurance company.

Kushi noted that the unemployment gap between renters and homeowners has widened. Typically, unemployment among renters is about 4.4 percentage points higher than among homeowners. Since the pandemic has intensified, that gap has jumped to 6.4 percentage points.

And even as home sales have grown, so have mortgage delinquencies. The proportion of homeowners who are 30 days or more behind on their payments jumped to 8.2% in the AprilJune quarter, up from 4.4% in the first three months of the year, according to the Mortgage Bankers’ Association. That was the largest quarterly increase in record, the MBA said.

In the meantime, the shortage of homes for sale is boosting prices. The median price has topped $300,000 for the first time on record, settling at $304,100. That’s up a sharp 8.5% from July 2019.

“With only 3.1 months of existing supply on the market, even with the recent pickup in the pace of home building, the lack of inventory is going to continue to be a hurdle by limiting some prospective buyers’ choices and weakening their purchasing power,” said Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association.