The US real estate market continues to cool, with prices for homes for sale taking a historic slowdown. However, they are still far from being accessible to millions of people in the US.
The cooling of the real estate market in the United States continues: the S&P CoreLogic Case Chiller index, which measures home sales in the country, indicated that real estate prices slowed to historical levels during the month of August.
According to the report of the mentioned index, prices increased only 13% with respect to last year, compared to the increase of 15.6% registered in July. Home prices in the United States continue to fall: how far they could go, according to experts.
However, home prices are still far from affordable for millions of people in the United States.
A report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) indicated that the average price of houses sold in September was $384,800 dollars, which represents an increase of 8.4% compared to the price of September of the year 2021. In this way, 127 months of sustained year-on-year increase in housing prices have been completed.
The reason why real estate market prices seem to be falling seems to be related to the aggressive monetary policy carried out by the US Federal Reserve, which has caused mortgages to reach extremely high levels. This has caused the ability of Americans to buy homes to be reduced, although facilities are still offered due to the drop in demand.
For the week of October 20, mortgage interest rates reached 6.94%, according to the latest data published by Freddie Mac, that is, twice as much as in the year 2021, when mortgage interest rates were at 3.09 %.
This situation is not too surprising: researchers from Goldman Sachs, one of the largest financial services groups in the world, had already warned in September of this year that the real estate market would fall throughout the year 2022 and that it could sink even more in the year 2023.
The firm projected, by 2022, a drop in new home sales of approximately 22%, as well as a drop in sales of pre-existing homes of 17%.
On the other hand, for the year 2023, Goldman Sachs estimated an 8% drop in sales of new homes and a 14% drop in sales of existing homes.