The US home turnover rate in the first half of 2023 has fallen to the lowest in at least a decade as high mortgage rates compel owners to stay put, Redfin Corp. said.
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Intrest rates have taken upwards of 100k of buying power from people, it’s not surprising that people aren’t selling houses unless they have to. Keeping rates low for over a decade was always going to cause things like this.
I’m not surprised at all. Even if I WANTED to move, we wouldn’t be able to afford to buy our house back on the open market. We got lucky, and now we’re stuck.
Building or buying up in this market feels like a dream, so we’re slowly improving the house we have to fit our needs.
Yup I’m still stuck in the cycle of endlessly throwing away money to my landlord. Saving up for a house and then making payments on something so expensive at such a high interest rate is still a dream for me. Granted, I’m a sucker for avocado toast so at least I know why it’s that way
Only 1%… I mean, wouldn’t it be concerning if it was 100%?
How much were they expecting?
Anyway the article says 14 out of 1,000, while 4 years ago in 2019 it was 19 out of 1,000.
Is that really surprising?
Home turnover is generally a sign of economic mobility. People should be able to afford nicer homes a few times in their life, or move to pursue greater opportunities. Having 25% fewer homes being sold means those conditions that cause people to move (to hopefully better situations) are not occurring.
Yes, but we just had a pandemic, where most people were afraid to look for houses, afraid to not catch a virus that at the time was unknown. Then after things started returning to normal we got inflation, because supply couldn’t keep up with demand so interest rates were jacked to stop it.
Then there’s the thing that especially in some industries there’s a massive push to keep working from home, so less motivation of moving.
I don’t think the current statistics are surprising.
I definitely agree that this isn’t surprising. Honestly the biggest factor for me is just the fed rates making mortgage rates ridiculous. This slowdown in home turnover was basically engineered by the fed in order to slow down the rapid home inflation we were seeing as everything reopened from the pandemic.
Still, it’s something worth putting out there so everyone’s aware of what’s happening.
I would love to move. My house isn’t worth enough for us to be able to afford to move. And it’s a decent house in a decent neighborhood. The problem is, people want to leave this town more than they want to live in it.
Why would anyone sell after buying or refinancing at a rate lower than inflation?