Pending home sales: contract signings that lead existing home sales

What the index measures

A home sale becomes pending when the contract is signed but the transaction has not closed. The index measures the number of such contracts relative to a base period. Changes are reported month over month and year over year.

Not every pending sale closes: financing, inspections or appraisals can cancel a contract. The index is therefore a guide to the direction of existing home sales rather than an exact forecast of their level.

Where it fits in the housing sequence

• Mortgage rates change, then buyers sign contracts or hold back; pending home sales capture that step.
• Closings follow, recorded in existing home sales one to two months later.
• New construction responds more slowly through permits and starts.
• Because each step is partly visible in advance, surprises in the later steps tend to be smaller.

Why futures rarely move much

The index is one of the less market-moving scheduled releases. It can matter to rates and to home-builder equities when the market is debating the effect of mortgage rates on demand, and it can reinforce a growth story set by other data. On most months, index and Treasury futures barely react at 10:00 ET, and any move is quickly absorbed into the session's ongoing auction.

Order flow: distinguishing reaction from coincidence

Because the release is small, a move at 10:00 ET on pending home sales day is often something else: the end of the opening auction's first half hour, a large order working through the book, or another release in the same minute. The footprint of the 9:00 CT bar should be compared with the bars before it; delta that switches sign right at 10:00 and keeps building is more suggestive of a reaction than a single bar with balanced delta.

Low-attention releases are also a reminder that liquidity does not always step back before a scheduled time. The heatmap on such mornings often shows the inside levels steady through 10:00, a contrast with CPI or payrolls mornings that helps calibrate what normal looks like.

In Senzoukria

In the News calendar, rows whose name contains pending home sales are classified by the Quant mode card in the Housing family. The row is usually rated medium or low by the calendar source; enable those levels in the Impact filter to see it.

The heatmap's Liquidity tab can tint levels by net additions and cancellations, which shows at a glance whether the book reacted to the release time at all.