Mortgage rates’ slow –but steady– march upwards combined with the return of home price gains are doing what they are predicted to: slow housing demand. According to the latest Housing Trends Report, the share of adults with plans to purchase a home within a year…
An earlier post revealed that 71% of buyers who were actively engaged in the process of finding a home in the first quarter of 2023 have spent 3+ months searching for a home without success. The inability to find an affordable home remains the most…
Improvements in affordability expectations have led to an increase in the share of prospective buyers who have moved beyond just the planning phase of their home search: 56% report being actively engaged in the purchase process in the first quarter of 2023, up from 46%…
Relatively lower interest rates (compared to fall 2022), slowing growth in home prices, and builder incentives are making an impact on buyers’ affordability expectations. In the first quarter of 2023, 73% of buyers reported being able to afford less than half the homes for-sale in…
After souring significantly in the final quarter of 2022, buyers’ expectations of housing availability edged up slightly in the first quarter of 2023, with 26% expecting the home search to get easier in the months ahead, just ahead of the 24% a quarter earlier. Despite…
Interest for new home construction was essentially unchanged between the final quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, as the share of prospective buyers looking to buy a newly built home barely edged from 20% to 21%. Meanwhile, the share interested in existing…
The price and availability of building materials again topped the list of problems builders faced last year, while interest rates (along with general inflation and negative media reports) moved considerably up the list. According to special questions on the January 2023 survey for the NAHB/Wells…
