Source: US News —
LOS ANGELES (AP) — U.S. home sales tumbled to the slowest pace in nearly a decade as soaring mortgage rates and sky high prices in 2022 pushed homeownership out of reach for many Americans.
The National Association of Realtors said Friday that existing U.S. home sales totaled 5.03 million last year, a 17.8% decline from 2021. That is the weakest year for home sales since 2014 and the biggest annual decline since 2008, during the housing crisis of the late 2000s.
The median national home price for all of last year jumped 10.2% to $386,300, the NAR said, and it’s up 42% from 2019, before ultra-low mortgage rates and pandemic-fueled demand sent the market into a frenzy. That translates to a median $114,000 increase in housing wealth in three years.
“So, homeowners have done well during this housing (market) from 2019 through Covid until now,” said Lawrence Yun, the NAR’s chief economist. “The one big negative for home sales is home prices, which have risen dramatically, much faster than peoples’ income.”
Mortgage rates more than doubled in 2022, climbing to a two-decade high of 7.08% in the fall as the Federal Reserve continued to boost its key lending rate in a quest to cool the economy and tame inflation. Home sales slowed from a torrid pace at the start of the year as the surge in borrowing costs limited home hunters’ buying power.
