Pending home sales up

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Pending home sales -- homes under contract but with sales not finalized -- were up in April, above both March levels and the same month a year ago, says the National Assn. of Realtors.

The figures are a little hard to understand because the Realtors association uses an index instead of hard numbers. Basically, it uses a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 reflecting the average number of pending sales in 2001. So with that in mind, the pending home sales index in April was 90.3, up from 84.6 in March and above the 87.5 score of April 2008. Here’s the report.

About 20% of home sales contracts don’t make it to final sales within two months, due to cancellations or delays, according to the NAR.

Those pending sales should be reflected in May and June actual sales figures.

-- Peter Y. Hong