For years now, the hot topic around the water cooler has been the housing market—how prices are skyrocketing, how you can't buy a home in the neighborhood you grew up in, how even creepy little suburban alleys are going for high five-figure takes.
The surge of inflation and lack of housing supply has driven that to insane new levels.
All that appears to be coming to an end:
Existing-home sales dropped for the fifth straight month in June, according to the National Association of REALTORS®. Three out of four major U.S. regions experienced month-over-month sales declines and one region held steady. Year-over-year sales sank in all four regions.
Total existing-home sales, completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, dipped 5.4% from May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.12 million in June. Year-over-year, sales fell 14.2% (5.97 million in June 2021).
"Falling housing affordability continues to take a toll on potential home buyers," said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. "Both mortgage rates and home prices have risen too sharply in a short span of time."
Just a few short months ago, it seems, people would do anything, anything at all, to get into a house.
Now they're just giving up.
This isn't good, though. Just because sales are slowing doesn't mean there isn't demand. Inflation and interest rate hikes are merely freezing people out.
There are a ton of people who desperately want to stop paying rent right now, and they've been edged out of owning their own home – a historic metric for how healthy the middle class, and thus the economy, is doing.
Many of these people are young couples who want to start families, adding more hurdles to our chaotic climate of population decline.
The silver lining is that we're rapidly moving toward a nice little buyer's market:
Total housing inventory registered at the end of June was 1,260,000 units, an increase of 9.6% from May and a 2.4% rise from the previous year (1.23 million). Unsold inventory sits at a 3.0-month supply at the current sales pace, up from 2.6 months in May and 2.5 months in June 2021.
Heck, at this rate you can pack up the whole family and take your pick of mansions on Rodeo Drive!
Okay maybe give it a few more months until the market collapses. Then everything will be cheap!
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
