The recent spate of bad weather has had a direct impact on the home sales figures for the United States. The extreme weather has actually stopped people being able to get out and look at homes. Even the most determined of buyers would have  been forced to stay home during the recent blizzards and snow storms. Sellers were also not interested in leaving thie homes for showings.

The overall result of this bad weather has resulted in home sales reported as down and additional declines are expected, according to the National Association of Realtors®.

The impact is something that everyone will will feel. Home sellers in the north of the country where the severe weather was the worst have not been able to sell their homes. This means that they cannot go on to buy another home in say "Nashville" as they had planned. That means the sellers of the Nashville home have had to sit on theri property longer than expected. When property sits for a long time, the usual advice from the listing agent is to reduce the list price to try and get some activity on the home. Now the value of the property has been further reduced as a direct result of the weather!

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said weather is going to have a direct impact on housing data. “January pending sales, though still higher than one year ago, remain much lower than expected given that a large number of potential buyers are eligible for the expanded home buyer tax credit. Moreover, the abnormally severe and prolonged winter weather, which affected large regions of the U.S., hampered shopping activity in February,” he said.

“We will see weak near-term sales followed by a likely surge of existing-home sales in April, May and June,” Yun said. “The real question is what happens in the second half of the year. If there is sufficient job creation, housing can become self-sustaining with stable to modestly rising home prices because inventory has been trending downward.”

The Government should propbably take this opportunity to extend the deadline for the tax credit in light of the fact that for about 6-8 weeks many people were just not in a position to be able to look at homes or sell their current home.