Today at 10:00am ET, the National Association of Realtors will release September’s existing home sales numbers. Last month, I predicted a change of direction in housing sales based on a pattern we have noticed in the query “homes for sale.” While August sales continued to fall, the decrease was only .5% versus the 2.5% mean prediction in a poll of U.S. Economists.
In advance of today’s announcement, I’ve decided to redo last months chart, and add the U.S. Census Bureau’s New Home Sales due out later this week, which did in fact increase over the previous month.

As stated on the U.S. Census Bureau’s site, they count a sale upon contract signing, while the NAR counts a sale upon closing, thus, the new home sales numbers often leads existing home sales by a month or so.
Today’s prediction by U.S. economists is that existing home sales will continue their fall to 6.23 million from 6.30. Was our call in September a month premature or is there a new factor effecting our “homes for sale” predictor? We’ll know in a few hours.