The sharp increase in mortgage rates has cast a chill on the housing market. Many buyers have paused their search; they can longer afford home prices they were considering a year ago. Sellers are also wary of listing their homes because of the high mortgage rates that would loom over their next purchase.
“People are stuck,” says Lawrence Yun, chief economist with the National Association of Realtors.
Yun and others describe the market as frozen, one in which home sales activity has declined for 10 months straight, according to NAR. It’s the longest streak of declines since the group started tracking sales in the late 1990s.
“The sellers aren’t putting their houses on the market and the buyers that are out there, certainly the power of their dollar has changed with rising interest rates, so there is a little bit of a standoff,” says Susan Horowitz, a New Jersey-based real estate agent.
Read more at NPR.org
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