After falling precipitously at the beginning of the pandemic, the housing market has improved markedly in recent weeks — though those gains have yet to show up in home sales. Because sales are captured when the deal closes not when the contract is signed, existing home sales data actually capture buyer behavior from one or even two months prior to the month noted in the release. So, today’s reading is measuring activity from a time when most businesses were still shuttered and people were just coming to terms with how their lives would be altered by pandemic. But despite the sharp ...