High mortgage rates are bringing home sales to a screeching halt. Pending sales, a measure of signed contracts on existing homes, plunged for the fourth straight month, down 10.2% in September.

Year-over-year, pending transactions plunged by 31%, according to the National Association of Realtors’ Pending Home Sales Index. In August, pending sales fell 2%.

“Persistent inflation has proven quite harmful to the housing market,” said the association’s Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “The Federal Reserve has had to drastically raise interest rates to quell inflation, which has resulted in far fewer buyers and even fewer sellers.”

It’s the largest month-to-month decline since May 2010 (if excluding the lockdown months of March and April of 2020), according to the association.

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