Investing.com - U.S. existing home sales declined in line with expectations in February, as rising prices and severe winter weather caused existing-home sales to slip, industry data showed on Thursday.
In a report, the National Association of Realtors said that existing home sales fell 0.4% to a seasonally adjusted 4.60 million units last month from 4.62 million in January.
February’s pace of sales was the lowest since July 2012, when it stood at 4.59 million.
Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said conditions in February were largely unchanged from January.
“We had ongoing unusual weather disruptions across much of the country last month, with the continuing frictions of constrained inventory, restrictive mortgage lending standards and housing affordability less favorable than a year ago,” he said.
Yun added that, “Some transactions are simply being delayed, so there should be some improvement in the months ahead. With an expected pickup in job creation, home sales should trend up modestly over the course of the year.”
Following the release of the data, the U.S. dollar added to gains against the euro, with EUR/USD shedding 0.58% to trade at 1.3752, compared to 1.3764 ahead of the data.
Meanwhile, U.S. stock markets were down after the open. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.25%, the S&P 500 dipped 0.25%, while the Nasdaq 100 declined 0.25%.