Pending home sales rose in June

By Chris Reidy, Globe Staff

A forecast out this morning offered a bit of hope for the what has been a sluggish local housing market.

According to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, the number of Bay State single-family homes put under agreement in June was up 9.28 percent when compared with the same time last year, and the number of condos put under agreement in June was up 8 percent on a year-to-year comparison basis.

The association refers to this metric as pending sales. The association’s pending sales analysis counts homes that have been put under agreement but are not yet completed sales. Often six weeks can elapse between the time a home is put under agreement and the time that the sale closes. In general, economists look at closed home sales when they seek to evaluate the condition of the market, but those data points can be several weeks old. According to the association, pending sales can sometimes give more of a real-time indication of where the housing market might be heading.

June was the second straight month that posted a gain in pending Massachusetts sales, the association said. The last time there were consecutive months of annual increases was November and December of 2010.

Last week, a number of groups, including the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, issued reports on completed home sales for May.

A Globe story on those reports noted that though Massachusetts home prices rose modestly, the sales volume was down on a year-to-year basis.

Last month, a nonprofit group called Massachusetts Housing Partnership issued a report of its own on the local housing market. Its prediction: Massachusetts has years to go before it will experience a substantial real estate recovery. In making its prediction, the partnership took into account the slow pace of the overall economic recovery and the number of home foreclosures. To read a Globe story about that report, please click here.