U.S. pending home sales falls sequentially in December, likely to fall further

Pending home sales in the U.S. fell sharply in December. On a sequential basis, pending home sales dropped 2.2 percent. Sales came in softer than Bloomberg consensus expectations of a rise of 0.5 percent.

Pending sales fell in three of the major four regions, with the exception being the West. The annual trend of pending home sales softened considerably to a fall of 9.5 percent from a fall of 7.8 percent and is in line with a stable fall in sales activity throughout the U.S.

Pending home sales measure housing contract activity, and are based on signed real-estate contracts for existing single-family homes, condos and co-ops. Around 80 percent of pending homes sales might become existing home sales in two months. Therefore, the December report implies a further all in home sales, said Barclays in a research report.

At 19:00 GMT the FxWirePro's Hourly Strength Index of US Dollar was neutral at 8.28818 more details on FxWirePro's Currency Strength Index, visit http://www.fxwirepro.com/currencyindex