Existing Home Sales
Existing Home Sales
The number, plainly.
The annualized number of previously owned homes sold in the month.
Higher, lower, and what each means.
Sales volume is the housing market's pulse. Low means owners are locked into old mortgages and nobody is moving; rising means the market is thawing.
A reading is not a verdict. The Scan phase of Woodring’s Loop collects the signal; the Story phase asks what futures it is consistent with, and only the Stake phase turns that into a decision. This page does the first part.
The line in your 2027 plan.
Tests: demand for everything that follows a move: renovation, furniture, moving services, local retail.
Write the assumption down, name the reading that would break it, and put a date on when it has to be argued again. That is the 18-Month Sunset applied to one line of a budget. The Last Annual Planshows what this season’s moves have already done to the common ones.
The last 13 readings.
Most recent first. Every value is as published by FRED at the time of the last refresh; FRED revises some series after the fact.
| Date | Value | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 1, 2026 | 3.99M | +1.5% |
| Aug 1, 2026 | 3.93M | −3.2% |
| Jul 1, 2026 | 4.06M | −1.7% |
| Jun 1, 2026 | 4.13M | −1.4% |
| May 1, 2026 | 4.19M | +3.7% |
| Apr 1, 2026 | 4.04M | +0.7% |
| Mar 1, 2026 | 4.01M | −2.9% |
| Feb 1, 2026 | 4.13M | +2.7% |
| Jan 1, 2026 | 4.02M | −5.9% |
| Dec 1, 2025 | 4.27M | +4.4% |
| Nov 1, 2025 | 4.09M | −0.5% |
| Oct 1, 2025 | 4.11M | +0.7% |
| Sep 1, 2025 | 4.08M | — |
When Existing Home Sales moves, know what it tests.
The monthly Signal Layer covers every series in the library: what moved, which planning assumptions it tests, and what a continuous-planning team does about it. One email a month. Unsubscribe in one click.
Where the number comes from.
Existing Home Sales (EXHOSLUSM495S), retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EXHOSLUSM495S. Refreshed daily; 13 readings on file from Sep 1, 2025 to Sep 1, 2026.
Predictive Planning Institute, Signal Library: Existing Home Sales (EXHOSLUSM495S). predictiveplanning.com/signals/EXHOSLUSM495S. Data via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Value 3.99M as of Sep 1, 2026.