There are early signs of a cooldown in some of the hottest corners of the U.S. housing market, Redfin said in a report on Friday, a fresh indication that high house prices and rising mortgage rates are cutting into homebuyer demand.
Among those early tells, according to Redfin: Google searches for “homes for sale” dropped by double digits in Baltimore, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles in the second week of March from a year earlier; tours of homes for sale in California were down 21 percent as of March 31 from the first week of 2022, data from ShowingTime shows; Redfin agents in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, Boston, and Seattle reported a drop in requests for homebuying help at the start of this year compared with last year, even as requests nationwide surged; and agents in California say they are seeing fewer offers on each home than previously.
