More homeowners are staying put as inflation ticks up, wage growth stagnates, and rising interest rates keep them from entering the trade-up market.
Along with the higher price and higher property taxes of a new, bigger home, higher interest rates form a cost barrier trifecta, called "rate lock," barring homeowners from selling their current home and moving up, writes Tim Mullaney for MarketWatch. Compounding the issue is the fact that median family incomes have grown by about 2.8 percent, whereas the income now needed to afford the median home has risen by 11.6 percent in the last year, per Grant Thornton data.
Welcome to 2018, where realtors are the new telemarketers: If you’re like me, you get a couple of calls a week, not looking to sell you a house, but looking for houses to sell. That’s because the real estate market is (exaggerating slightly) as bare of inventory as the shelves of a former Soviet Union grocery store, to hear builders and realtors tell it.
