Buyers and Sellers Have Reached a Standoff at the Start of the Spring Season

After a push-and-pull housing market between buyers and sellers over the last two years, experts say 2023 may be the year of a real estate standoff. Elevated borrowing costs and still-high home prices are discouraging buyers from purchasing and sellers from listing. New listings were down 20% year-over-year in March and were down almost 27% compared with March 2019, and according to The New York Times, the homes listed were usually overpriced or in need of renovation.

Still, home showings are up 20% since the start of the year, and mortgage applications were up 19% for the week ending March 24 compared with the previous four weeks, suggesting a slight boost in demand, likely due to seasonality.

That house you buy today will cost you 84 percent more a month to own than it would have if you bought it in March 2019, when the median price was $255,875, interest rates were 4.06 percent, and your monthly payments would have been a humble $984.

A buyer’s only reprieve, it would seem, is a drop in interest rates. But how likely is that? Bob Walters, the chief executive of Rocket Mortgage, predicts that mortgage rates will remain stable, or maybe slip a little in the months ahead, barring “an unwelcome inflation report.”

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