Existing home sales slipped in June

Sales of existing U.S. homes slipped in June, but price inflation continued at a double-digit clip, the National Association of Realtors said Monday. Home sales dropped 1.2 percent from May to June, declining to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.08 million homes, a drop from a downwardly revised 5.14 annual rate for May. Sales are still high above the same month a year earlier, when the annual rate was 4.4 million homes sold. Prices rose 13.5 percent in June from June 2012 to a national median price of $214,200, which makes it 16 consecutive months prices rose from the same month a year earlier. "Affordability conditions remain favorable in most of the country," Lawrence Yun, the trade group's chief economist, said in a statement. "We're still dealing with a large pent-up demand," he said. Rising lending rates, Yun said, are expect to affect markets in "high cost" areas, such as California, Hawaii and New York City. Interest rates tracked by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. rose to 4.07 percent in June for 30-year conventional loans, the highest rate since October 2011, NAR noted. The trade group said there was an inventory of 2.19 million existing homes on the market in June, which represents a 5.2-month supply at the present rate of sales. Existing home sales in June fell 1.6 percent in the Northeast and were unchanged in the Midwest. Sales in the South fell 1.5 percent month to month while in the West sales fell 1.6 percent, NAR said.