Economists' Outlook

Housing stats and analysis from NAR's research experts.

In a monthly REALTORS® Confidence Index Survey, NAR asks REALTORS®: In the past 3 months, think of your most recent sales contract that either went into settlement or terminated. Please explain how the deal concluded.”.

Among contracts during the three month time period February to April 2015, 64 percent of contracts were settled on time, 26 percent had delayed settlement, and 10 percent were terminated.  This is based on the responses of 1,539 randomly selected REALTORS® who answered this question in the April 2015 survey. The share of contracts that settled on time has stayed at about this level since NAR asked the question in January 2015. NAR will monitor this data in light of the RESPA-TILA changes slated August 1.

About 60 percent of REALTORS® reporting on their last contract indicated that the contract had some type of issue:  12 percent had financing issues, 8 percent had home inspection issues, and 7 percent faced appraisal issues. It is surprising that in a “tight” and “difficult” credit environment, only 12 percent of contracts that were reported to have settled or terminated had financing issues. One explanation may be that potential homebuyers are deciding to sit on the sidelines for now, so these buyers were not captured in the data.

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