Pending-home sales could lift Home Depot’s moving season demand

Pending-home sales are one of the clearest early reads on whether moving season will bring more work to Home Depot’s aisles later in the season. When contract activity turns, the first wave is usually not a full remodel. It is paint, flooring, appliances, cleaning supplies, storage, fixtures, and the long list of small make-ready items that fill carts before keys change hands.

What the index tells store teams

The National Association of REALTORS® treats the Pending Home Sales Index as a leading indicator because it measures signed contracts for existing single-family homes, condos and co-ops before closings happen. That makes it more useful to store leaders than a backward-looking sales report, especially when the question is not whether housing is hot, but what kind of traffic is likely to show up in the next few weeks and months.

In April 2026, pending home sales rose 1.4% month over month and 3.2% year over year. The gains were not even across the country, either. They increased in the Northeast, Midwest and West, while the South declined. Lawrence Yun said buyers are showing “cautious optimism” despite economic uncertainty and a slight rise in mortgage rates, and he said demand would be stronger if rates retreated to earlier 2026 levels. He also warned that supply still needs to improve and that limited supply could keep home-price growth ahead of wage growth.

That kind of split matters on the Home Depot floor. A national headline may look modest, but local stores do not sell to the nation. They sell to neighborhoods, school districts, commuter corridors and metro areas where turnover can produce a burst of urgency even when the broader market still feels uneven.

Where the lift shows up in the store

The moving-related spend tied to pending sales tends to cluster around the same categories every time: paint for quick refreshes, flooring for worn rooms, appliances for move-in replacements, cleaning supplies for empty homes, storage for sorting life between addresses, and fixtures or small hardware that make a house feel livable fast. If closings hold steady, that usually means more shopping lists, more measurements, more appliance questions and more delivery coordination.

That traffic is not all the same customer, and associates can feel the difference at the desk. Some shoppers are moving into a new place and need basic essentials before the truck arrives. Some are redoing a home before listing it. Others are trying to make a house easier to sell by fixing the visible wear that turns up in every walkthrough. Those are different jobs, and they should lead to different conversations on the floor.

A store that reads pending-home-sales trends well can adjust for the mix. Paint and storage may lean more DIY, while flooring, appliances and delivery-heavy jobs often pull in more pro help, installation questions or coordination with service partners. The real value is not just knowing that demand exists. It is knowing which part of the aisle deserves more attention and which kinds of solutions need the best-trained associate on hand.

Why the local market matters more than the headline

The metro breakdown in April shows why this should be treated as a store-level planning tool, not a generic housing story. Among the 50 largest metro areas, Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH led annual pending-sales gains at 10.3%. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL followed at 9.4%, then Oklahoma City, OK at 8.6%, Milwaukee-Waukesha, WI at 7.4%, Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk, VA-NC at 7.2%, Raleigh-Cary, NC at 5.7%, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX at 5.5%, Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV at 5.4%, Columbus, OH at 5.4% and Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC at 5.1%.

That dispersion is the point. A district with strong turnover in one metro can see a meaningful bump in project traffic even if the country overall looks only mildly improved. Department leads should use that kind of signal to decide where to place labor, which categories need stronger coverage and where to expect more timing-sensitive customers who want quick answers, not broad advice.

The homeowner journey is also not linear. A household can be moving, preparing to list, or fixing up a home for a future sale. Each version creates different work for the floor team. Associates who can distinguish those needs early are better positioned to steer the sale toward the right products, the right service, and the right follow-up.

The market is better, but not normal

The longer arc still shows a market that has improved without fully recovering. In November 2024, NAR said the Pending Home Sales Index was 77.4 in October 2024, and that 100 equals the level of contract activity in 2001. That means even a better month still sits well below a long-run benchmark that store teams can use as a reminder that turn-driven demand may be uneven rather than broad-based.

NAR’s June 2025 research update reinforced that point. Pending home sales rose 1.8% in May from the prior month and 1.1% year over year, while 27% of respondents expected seller traffic to rise over the next three months and 28% of homes sold above list price. In other words, expectations can firm up before the market fully normalizes, and that can matter for stores that depend on people spending the moment they decide to move, list, or settle in.

Why Home Depot should care now

Home Depot’s own guidance suggests a company still waiting for a fuller housing and repair recovery. In December 2025, the company said it expected the home-improvement market to range from -1% to +1% in fiscal 2026 and projected comparable sales to be roughly flat to up 2%. Then, in its May 19, 2026 first-quarter fiscal 2026 results, Home Depot reported sales of $41.8 billion, up 4.8% from a year earlier, with comparable sales up 0.6% and U.S. comparable sales up 0.4%.

Ted Decker said the company’s underlying demand was “relatively similar” to what it saw throughout fiscal 2025, despite greater consumer uncertainty and housing affordability pressure. That is the operating backdrop store leaders need to keep in mind: demand is not roaring back all at once, but moving season can still create pockets of urgency that show up first in the aisles that support turnover.

For Home Depot, pending-home sales are not just a housing statistic. They are a practical hint about which projects are likely to arrive next, how much labor to place on the floor, and whether the next wave of customers will want quick DIY answers or more installation-ready solutions.