Today we’re seeing a return of USD buyers although the price action has been slow and the day has been mostly quiet, even in GOLD which has been very volatile recently. US home sales for March posted a slowdown, as interest rates remain elevated, with the FED postponing the June cut.

This week has been slow overall and it seems to end like that, with little in terms of economic data releases, leading to subdued market activity. Without major data points to drive significant moves, trading has been slow and choppy, with prices bouncing in tight ranges. Today’s session saw minor fluctuations in major currency pairs, with the dollar pushing slowly higher against most counterparts.

EUR/USD has fallen to around 1.0645, while USD/JPY also saw limited movement to 154.65. The pound saw a slight uptick to 1.2473 but continued to consolidate below the 1.2500 level. Commodity currencies followed a similar pattern. In the stock market, there’s a minor rebound in risk sentiment. The home sales report leaned on the weak side, however, it’s not too bad, so the reaction was minimal.

US Existing Home Sales for March 2024

• Existing home sales for March 4.19M versus 4.20M estimate
• Prior month 4.38M annualized rate
• Existing home sales 4.19 million for March versus 4.20 million estimate
• Existing home sales percentage change -4.3%
• YoY existing home sales fell -3.7%
• Existing home sale price rose 4.8% from March 2023 to $393,500 (up from $375,300 last year). That is the ninth consecutive month of year-over-year price gains in the highest price ever for the month of March
• inventory of unsold homes grew 4.7% from one month ago to 1.11 million for the equivalent of 3.2 month supply at the current monthly sales pace. That is up from 2.9 months last month, and 2.7 months in March 2023.

Other details

• Days on the market 33 versus 38 days
• Investor purchases 15% versus 21%
• First-time buyer 32% versus 26% last month and 28% in March 2023
• SALES accounted for 28% of transactions in March. That is down from 33% in February and up from 27% last year.
• The 30 year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.88% as of April 11 up from 6.82% the previous week and 6.27% one year ago

Home Sales Regionally

• Northeast:

  • Sales increased by 4.2% from February to an annual rate of 500,000 in March.
  • Year-over-year, sales were down 3.8%.
  • Median price was $434,600, up 9.9% from last year.