Higher interest rates have led millions of existing homeowners with mortgages under 4% to postpone plans to list their homes for sale, and for many prospective buyers, that supply vacuum has left newly built homes as the only game in town. That is the backdrop behind the strengthening of interest for new homes. According to…
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 dropped to 15% in the second quarter of 2023, down…
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 common reason buyers looking for 3+ months can’t make a…
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% a quarter earlier. The share of prospective buyers actively searching…
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 their markets, down from a record high of 87% 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 the mild improvement, buyers’ perceptions of housing availability remain well…
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 homes dropped from 39% to 37% during this period, while…
