Children ride scooters past a house for sale in Los Angeles. Home sales have slowed as mortgage rates have climbed.Evan Paul and his wife entered 2022 thinking it would be the year they would finally buy a home.“We just kind of got to that place in our lives where we were financially very stable, we wanted to start having kids and we wanted to just kind of settle down,” says Paul, 34.High home prices were the initial insurmountable hurdle.
“At first, we started lowering our expectations, looking for even smaller houses and even less ideal locations,” says Paul, who eventually realized that the high mortgage rates were pricing his family out again.Buyers and sellers put plans on ice “A year ago, this probably would’ve already sold,” he says. “This home will sell, too. It’s just going to take a little bit longer.”The cottage first went on the market back in August. Four months later, it’s still waiting for an offer.This country’s home-buying frenzy is really, definitely over. Home sales have fallen for 10 straight months. It’s the longest streak of declining sales in more than two decades. NPR’s Arezou Rezvani spoke with buyers and sellers.
REZVANI: Paul and his wife, who both work in the biotech industry, did end up having a baby, a little girl, just a couple of weeks ago. But they never did move up and out of their two-bedroom condo. Initially, it was because of high home prices in their city of Boston. A year ago, low interest rates unleashed a home-buying frenzy, and they were outbid every time.REZVANI: Then the Fed started raising interest rates.
REZVANI: And that right there is what’s contributing to something of a freeze in the housing market, says Susan Horowitz, a New Jersey-based real estate agent.
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