Prospective homebuyers are running out of options as rising interest rates, elevated home prices, and an uncertain economic outlook create a seemingly endless series of hurdles to homeownership. Fannie Mae’s Home Purchase Sentiment Index fell for the seventh straight month in a row in September to its lowest level since October 2011, MarketWatch reports.
Only 19% of survey respondents said now is a good time to buy a home, while six in ten consumers said now is instead a good time to sell. Those surveyed said that they expect interest rates to move even higher and home prices to fall within the next 12 months, and most would-be homebuyers are willing to wait for affordability to improve to make a housing market comeback.
“Consumers’ expectation that home prices will decrease matched a survey high, with a higher percentage of consumers believing home prices will decrease … over the next year,” Doug Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist at Fannie Mae, said in a statement.
That’s “a shift in survey sentiment that had previously only happened in 2011 and at the start of the pandemic in 2020,” he added.
Advertisement
Related Stories
Housing Markets
10 Biggest Publicly Traded Home Builders Undeterred by High Mortgage Rates
Together, the 10 biggest builders recorded 77,255 new homes in Q1 2024, an increase of more than 18% from Q1 2023
Economics
Mortgage Rate Declines Could Boost Home Sales Following Months of Low Activity
Encouraging economic news bumped mortgage applications up by 2.6% for the week ending May 3
Affordability
NAHB Announces Plan to Address the Housing Affordability Crisis
The National Association of Home Builders has outlined a 10-step plan that would increase the supply of single-family and multifamily for-sale and for-rent housing