Sales of previously owned homes will fall for a second year in 2023 to their lowest annual total since 2012, when the housing market was still recovering from the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008–09, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) on Dec. 13, which believes that housing sales prices will remain high, but stable.
Previously owned home sales have been falling since the beginning of the year as Federal Reserve’s aggressive policy to hike interest rates in its battle against high inflation caused mortgage rates to surge.
The Fed slowed its pace of rate hikes to 50 basis points after its policy meeting ended on Dec. 14, after four consecutive months of 75 basis-point increases, a day after U.S. consumer inflation readings fell for a second month in November.Housing Sales Expected to Decline in 2023
Sales through October 2022 were just short of 4.4 million, according to Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist and senior vice president of research.Housing sales are projected to tumble 6.8 percent, to 4.78 million next year, according to the NAR.
This would be a massive drop from the 5.13 million projections for 2022, which includes expected housing sales numbers for November and December.U.S. home sales reached its peak in the wake of the pandemic, with more than 6.12 million purchases in 2021, for the highest sales total since 2006, right before the financial crisis of 2008–09.
