(CEP News) - The latest pending home sales report showed a slight improvement in the U.S. housing sector, with sales in February better than expected.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) revealed Wednesday morning that pending U.S. home sales rose 2.1% in February, after falling 7.7% in January.

Economists were expecting a flat reading in the month.

“Pending home sales have a way to go for there to be a meaningful increase, but recent increases in shopping activity are hopeful indicators that we’ll see additional sales gains,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist. “More buyers are getting into the market to take advantage of stimulus incentives and much improved housing affordability conditions, but it will take a few months before we could see this turn up in measurable sales contract activity.”

Pending sales in the Northeast rose 6.1%, but are still down 17.3% compared to a year ago, while the Midwest saw a 10.5% rise, still down 1.9% from January 2008. Sales in the south rose 3.6%, while sales in the West fell 14%, down 6.3% from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, the NAR’s affordability index rose 0.9 percentage points to a record high of 173.5 in February from an upwardly revised index of 172.6 in January, and is 36.3 percentage points higher than a year ago, the report said.

Pending home sales are real estate contracts that have been signed but not finalized, and are used to predict existing home sales.

By Stephen Huebl, shuebl@economicnews.ca, edited by Sarah Sussman, ssussman@economicnews.ca

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Posted in Categories: Economy, Housing, Releases, USA.

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