Is the Housing Market in a Recession? Experts Can’t Decide

According to Realtor.com, the housing market is slowing down. After two years of the pandemic, reports show rising mortgage rates, weaker sales, and decreasing vigor in home building. Some economists are certain that the U.S. housing market is in a recession; others aren’t so sure. Sellers currently are adapting and adjusting their listing prices to match demand. About a third of homes for sale on Realtor.com in markets like Austin, Texas and Reno, Nev. are seeing price cuts in response to the slowing demand.

Recession or no recession, that doesn’t reflect on how home prices will grow (or not) over the next few months, one economist said.

“I wouldn’t say we’re in a housing market recession,” Sam Hall, assistant property economist at Oxford Economics, said.

But the data adds “to the evidence that house-price growth has peaked,” he added. “We are forecasting a small fall in prices, with house-price growth bottoming out at -5% [year-over-year] by mid-2023.”

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