Oil, weather hurts national home sales

Higher oil prices led to a 3.8 percent drop last month in existing home
sales nationally, according to the National Association of Realtors.
There was a seasonally-adjusted number of 4.81 million sales, down
190,000 from April. “Current housing market activity indicates a very
slow pace of broader economic activity, but recent reversals in oil
prices are likely to mitigate the impact going forward,” said Lawrence
Yun, chief economist at the NAR. “The pace of sales activity in the
second half of the year is expected to be stronger than the first half,
and will be much stronger than the second half of last year.” [SFBJ]