Sales of previously occupied US homes slumped in October to their slowest pace in more than 16 years as mortgage rates climbed sharply, ratcheting up borrowing costs for aspiring homebuyers.
Existing home sales fell 5.5% last month from September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.75 million units, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. That’s the slowest annual sales pace since August 2010, when the market was still reeling from the late-2000s housing crash.
Sales sank 8.8% compared with October last year. The latest sales tally fell short of the 3.8 million pace economists were expecting, according to FactSet.