Source: Fortune —
As summer kicks off, everything is heating up. Everything, it seems, except the housing market. Following a blistering two year tear, real estate firm Redfin is reporting big drops in demand and price cuts becoming the norm in many of the hottest corners of the market. According to a report on June 23 by Redfin, its Homebuyer Demand Index posted a year-over-year decline of 16%—the largest decrease in over two years—as 30-year mortgage rates neared 6%. “The market was still quite hot with lots of bidding wars, and it was still very common for homes to go above asking price,” Redfin’s chief economist Daryl Fairweather told Fortune in an interview. “But that has slowed down a lot since the Fed raised interest rates and continues to raise interest rates. It’s now almost 30% more expensive to buy a home that was just a year ago, so that’s certainly slowing down demand. Also, home sellers don’t need to participate in this market. They got record equity last year because of the increase in home values.”
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