U.S. pending home sales down 2.6 percent in August
Fewer people signed contracts to buy homes in August, marking the fifth decline in the past six months. The 2.6 percent fall continues to reflect the worsening shortage nationwide of homes being listed for sale.
The National Association of Realtors said that its pending home sales index fell to 106.3 in August from 109.1 in July. It’s the index’s lowest point since a 106.1 reading in January 2016 and 2.6 percent lower than a year ago.
Pending sales contracts are a barometer of future purchases. Sales are typically completed a month or two after a contract is signed.
An economist for the Realtors is forecasting existing home sales for 2017 to be around 5.44 million, about 0.2 percent lower than last year’s 5.45 million.
The Realtors said hurricanes Harvey and Irma had a particularly negative impact in the South, where pending sales contracts declined 7.8 percent. Pending sales fell 3.1 percent in the Northeast, but ticked up slightly in the Midwest and West.
Homebuyers are caught in a period of rising home values, a limited selection of properties on the market and a shortage of savings.
A new survey released Wednesday by the real estate firm Zillow found that only 39 percent of millennial buyers this year are able to make the recommended 20 percent down payment — and those who do are more likely to rely on money from family and friends. This trails older buyers who often already own homes and can afford a larger down payment.
The median price paid for a home by millennials, ages 18 to 37, was approximately $200,394. Their median down payment was roughly $21,750 — a down payment of less than 11 percent.
As millennials — who account for most first-time buyers — are searching for a home to buy, more than 60 percent are simultaneously looking at rentals. This suggests that a decent number of younger buyers are either getting outbid or not finding properties in their desired neighborhood. Zillow found that 37 percent of millennial buyers went over their budget, much higher than 29 percent of all buyers.
Because the millennials are such a large population, Zillow chief economist Svenja Gudell expects they’ll keep attempting to purchase homes despite any frustrations.
“We’re going to see continuous strong demand,” she said. our fans were split,” said Mike Siemienas, a General Mills spokesman. “Some really liked it, and some really wanted the old Trix back.”
That finding contradicts the now-dominant narrative about what modern consumers want from their food. According to the market research firm Nielsen, 61 percent of global consumers, and 50 percent of North Americans, are avoiding artificial colors, mostly because of health concerns.
In response, more than a dozen major packaged-food companies announced plans to root out artificial colors, flavors and preservatives in everything from banana peppers to Baby Ruths.
But in the process, many are discovering that the market for their products is actually quite fragmented, and that different groups of consumers are looking for different — even opposite — qualities in the same foods, said David Portalatin, a food-industry analyst at the research firm NPD.
“The days of the one-sizefits-all blockbuster brand are probably over,” Portalatin said.
Consumers revolted in 2014 when Coca-Cola replaced the crystalline fructose in Vitaminwater with stevia, a plantbased sweetener. Despite stevia’s “natural” and no-calorie credentials, many complained that it lacked the sweetness of sugar.
For Trix, the experience was much the same. The company released its reformulated version of the cereal in January 2016, after testing 69 natural replacements for the bright yellow, orange, purple, red, blue and green dyes found in the original product.
Although the flavor and nutritional content of the new Trix were similar, the iconic red was duller, and because the company’s scientists couldn’t find a good replacement for blue and green, it had to get rid of them.
On social media, the company faced an immediate onslaught of criticism.
General Mills will soon begin shelving its newer, naturally colored cereal alongside the older, brighter “Trix Classic.”