Data shows that sales of existing homes in the U.S. jumped 14.7 percent in December 2015, as compared to November's figures. However, the National Association of Realtors was quick to say that this does not mean that the housing market is experiencing a sudden boom.
"(Friday's) data just confirms that the November drop was due to delays in closings that were pushed to December," Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist told CNBC.
In November, the market experienced an 11 percent monthly drop in home sales, which experts are blaming on the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure, or TRID. TRID is a new set of rules from federal regulators which require lenders to present borrowers with a disclosure form listing all details of the loan at least three days before closing the deal.
This new protocol was implemented in October, and although the industry had over a year to prepare, the market experienced delays and pushed a significant number of closings to December.
"Someone might see the average closing time go from 46 to 49 days and assume that's not significant, but when you look at the amount of homes that close in a three-day time span on average, we can almost fully account for the massive drop in existing home sales in November," Matthew Graham of Mortgage News Daily said.
Now that TRID has been smoothly implemented, the real estate industry is expected to continue its steady rise since 2015. According to Yahoo Finance, the market "looks bright" for this year.
Nav Athwal, CEO of Realty Shares, predicts a "healthier housing market, with median home sale prices in 2016 projected to hit close to $250,000." He added that crowdfunding, which caught on in 2015, is a great avenue to access private real estate market.
According to Mansion Global, NAR is positive that the country will weather the market volatility.
"It is very rare when the housing market is recovering to have a recession," Yun concluded.
