Print edition: 
Pending home sales — the monthly measure of signed home sales contracts that haven't closed — are plummeting nationally.
And the number of sales contracts is soft in Wichita as it enters a traditionally slow period.
The result is a lot of uncertainty as brokers and agents try to finish out 2010 on a busy note.
The National Association of Realtors' pending home sales index declined 2.6 percent in June, and finished 18.6 percent below June 2009.
And short-term sales should be "notably lower," said Lawrence Yun, the NAR's chief economist, in a statement.
"There could be a couple of additional months of slow home sales activity before picking up later in the year, provided the job market continues to improve," Yun said.
The contract numbers aren't great in Wichita, according to brokers. And the outlook for the rest of the year remains uncertain, thanks to the anomaly of the homebuyer tax credits.
The contract deadline for those credits passed on April 30, causing sales to be packed into the first months of the year.
"I think that everyone in Wichita's trying to figure out how to read the crests and troughs of the tax credits," said Stan Longhofer, director of Wichita State University's Center for Real Estate.
"We knew sales were going to be up right before the April deadline and fall afterwards. All the reports making that a big deal? Well, it isn't. It's not a surprise."
John McKenzie, president of Wichita's Coldwell Banker Plaza Real Estate, said July closed sales on the South Central Kansas Multiple Listing Service are down 60 percent from June.
"So as you can see, there's been a marked decrease across the board," he said.
"The absence of incentives beyond what we already have — which are great interest rates, good inventory and motivation — is apparently driving the market."
Gary Walker, residential general manager at Wichita's J.P. Weigand & Sons, said pending sales there "are about where we expected for this time of year."
"The end of July and all of August normally are very slow due to heat, which is worse than usual this year, and back to school."
Longhofer said sales were tracking slowly upward before the tax credits skewed sales.
"The challenge we've got right now is when you've got a big wave that comes through, it's hard to find the baseline as you sift through the changes," he said.
"Nobody's really going to know until we get through the next few months.... Is that underlying trend of the market cautiously and slowing moving up continuing through these waves? I'm optimistic that it is."
