Housing Market Update: Demand Slips, Pushing More Sellers to Drop Asking Prices

Source: Redfin — 

Early-stage homebuying demand continues to falter this spring as new listings fell 7% from a year earlier, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate shot up to 5% and the median asking price climbed to $397,747, sending the typical homebuyer’s monthly payment up 35% year over year to an all-time high of $2,288. Here are the key early indicators that tell us demand is softening at a time of year it typically springs up:

• Fewer people searched for “homes for sale” on Google—searches during the week ending April 9 were down 3% from a year earlier.
• The seasonally-adjusted Redfin Homebuyer Demand Index—a measure of requests for home tours and other home-buying services from Redfin agents—has declined 3% in the past four weeks, compared to a 5% increase during the same period last year. The index was up 2% from a year earlier.
• Touring activity from the first week of January through April 10 was 23 percentage points behind the same period in 2021, according to home tour technology company ShowingTime.

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