You know that scene in a horror movie where the guy gets stabbed, hits the floor, twitches a finger, and everyone screams "he's alive!"? Yeah. The American housing market just twitched its finger.
Existing home sales in the United States rose 1.7% in February compared to January, reaching a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.09 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). And before anyone starts popping champagne, here's a detail: year-over-year, sales actually dropped 1.4%.
One step forward, two steps back. The American housing market has become a hamster on a wheel.
What actually happened
These February numbers reflect contracts signed back in December and January, when mortgage rates eased up a bit and hovered around 6% annually on the 30-year fixed. A year earlier, they were a full percentage point higher. In other words, people jumped on a tiny window of opportunity — and even then, the result was this pathetic trickle.
Lawrence Yun, the Realtors' chief economist, dropped a line that should be tattooed on the forehead of every overly optimistic analyst: "Despite the modest gain, real housing demand is quiet relative to job and wage gains."
Translation from econ-speak: Americans are earning more, there are plenty of jobs — 6 million more positions than in 2019 — but they're still not buying homes. Annual sales have dropped by 1 million units over the same period.
Damn, when someone has money and a job and STILL won't buy, the problem isn't them. The problem is the market.
The inventory knot: the tortoise with arthritis
Here's where the real villain of this story lives — and it's not the interest rate.
There were 1.29 million units for sale at the end of February. Up 2.4% from January and 4.9% from February 2025. At the current sales pace, that's 3.8 months of inventory. For those who don't know, a balanced market sits at 6 months. So we're light-years from equilibrium.
Yun himself admitted: "Inventory is growing, but sluggishly."
Sluggishly is a euphemism. The guy's a diplomat. I'd call it comatose.
An interesting data point from Redfin: nearly 45,000 properties that were pulled off the market last fall — due to slow sales and consumer confidence being in the gutter — were relisted in January. That's the highest number for a January in a decade. 3.6% of all listed properties were re-listings. People who gave up, took a shot of courage (or desperation), and came back to try again.
Prices: alive, but on life support
The median price of a home sold in February was $398,000, up a measly 0.3% year-over-year. The luxury market — above $1 million — keeps selling fine. At the bottom end, sales tanked.
This is the effect I always talk about: when the market tightens, the ones who get screwed are at the bottom of the pyramid. The rich buy with cash or get terms the bank would never offer a regular person. The worker trying to buy their first home? They're looking at prices, looking at rates, and heading right back to renting.
First-time buyers accounted for 34% of sales (compared to 31% a year ago), which sounds like good news until you remember the pre-pandemic historical average was 40%. Investors held steady at 16%.
And homes are taking 47 days to sell, compared to 42 days a year ago. The market isn't frozen — it's in slow motion.
So what does this mean for Brazil?
Look, the American housing market is a brutal thermometer for the real economy. When the average American — with a job, wages growing 4 points above home price inflation, and lower interest rates than the previous year — still won't buy a house, that's a sign confidence is in the basement.
And when American consumer confidence sinks, the whole world feels it. Including us down here, exporting commodities to an economy that might be more fragile than the headlines suggest.
The question that lingers: if the market barely moves with jobs, rising wages, and lower rates, what happens when the next shock hits?
