N.A.R.® Pending Sales Index Declines 2.1% Year-Over-Year in April: NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RELATORS® released its pending sales index for April 2018, down 1.3% after two months of previous gains. No region saw gains in contracts, while the western index lost .4% from last month and is down 4.6% below last year.

    Home Prices Show Little Signs of Slowing: The Case-Shiller Index shows that home prices rose by 6.5% in March, continuing robust growth from increasing demand and limited supply. Seattle (13.0%), Vegas (12.4%) and San Francisco (11.3%) had the highest year-over-year growth, but both the 10-city and 20-city indices rose by similar proportions to the overall series. The downside to this growth is that affordability will continue to deteriorate as prices consistently outpace growth in take-home pay.

    Construction Spending Rises Strongly in April: Census Bureau reports that construction spending in April 2018 increased 7.6% at an annualized rate of $1.31 billion. Month over month growth increased by 1.8% from revisited March estimates as well. Overall, growth was driven by strong private residential single-family construction (+9.6% year-over-year, 4.5% month-over-month). New multi-family was up from last month (+3.6%), but down from last year (-4.0%).