Rising mortgage rates, high inflation, ongoing building material supply chain disruptions, and elevated home prices contributed to housing affordability falling – yet again – to its lowest point since the Great Recession in the third quarter of 2022. According to the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index (HOI), just 42.2% of new and existing homes sold…
An earlier post revealed that a record 70% of buyers who were actively engaged in the process of finding a home in the third quarter of 2022 have spent 3+ months searching for a home without success. Those buyers also have higher incomes and education levels than in previous quarters. The most common reason these…
Higher interest rates are pricing out some (not all) buyers, but also transforming remaining prospects into active buyers. In the third quarter of 2022, 59% of prospective buyers had moved beyond the planning phase and become fully engaged in the buying process, up from 46% in the first quarter and 49% in the second quarter…
Prospective buyers in the third quarter of 2022 are more likely to have higher levels of income and education than earlier in the year. This helps explain why affordability expectations have improved. In the third quarter of 2022, 69% of buyers could only afford a minority of homes for sale in their markets, a much…
For the second straight quarter, more prospective buyers expect housing availability to improve. In the third quarter of 2022, 37% of buyers expect the home search to get easier in the months ahead, up from 17% and 22% in the first and second quarters of the year, respectively. More for-sale inventory and less competition from…
After bottoming out at 19% in the first quarter of 2022, the popularity of new homes continues to rebound, as the share of buyers looking for new construction rose to 21% and 27% in the second and third quarters of the year, respectively. A possible factor behind this trend is that the inventory of new…
The share of adults planning a home purchase within a year rose to 15% in the third quarter of 2022, up from 13% in the first half of the year. The marginal increase suggests that the prospect of higher mortgage rates in the near term may be leading a small segment of consumers to consider…
