The latest local home sales data shows today's high interest rates, these days over 7%, are continuing to chill home sales across the Wasatch Front, but prices are still sticking high amid low availability, despite last winter's price correction.
"Interest rates have sidelined buyers, but prices are holding up better than expected," said Dejan Eskic, chief economist for the Salt Lake Board of Realtors and a senior research fellow specializing in housing research at the University of Utah's Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. , but "we're still not seeing unemployment rates increase, we're not seeing unemployment insurance filings like you would in a recession," Eskic said. "So until we start losing jobs, we really don't have a recession."The result has been crushing for home shoppers, who face much higher monthly mortgage payments thanks to stubbornly high home prices and the impact of high rates.