The Housing Market Has Gone From Bad to Worse
In 15 years, we’ve had a historic housing crash, a historic housing crunch, a historic pandemic-fueled buying spree, and a historic mortgage-rate spiral.
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If you want to buy or sell a house in 2022, I wish you good luck. Mortgage rates have increased faster than in almost any period on record, adding tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to the typical cost of owning a home. For many people, that point is immaterial, because they can’t even find a place to buy: The number of available homes is still about lower than it was before the pandemic. If you want to find a new place to rent, good luck twice over. The average rent has soared to an all-time high, as demand in the absence of available units.
