U.S. home sales tumbled to the slowest pace in nearly a decade as soaring mortgage rates and sky-high prices in 2022 pushed homeownership out of reach for many Americans.
The National Association of Realtors said Friday that existing U.S. home sales totaled 5.03 million last year, a 17.8 percent decline from 2021. That is the weakest year for home sales since 2014 and the biggest annual decline since 2008, during the housing crisis of the late 2000s.
Mortgage rates more than doubled in 2022, climbing to a two-decade high of 7.08 percent in the fall as the Federal Reserve continued to boost its key lending rate in a quest to cool the economy and tame inflation. Home sales slowed from a torrid pace at the start of the year as the surge in borrowing costs limited home hunters’ buying power.
Mortgage rates are likely to remain a significant hurdle with the Federal Reserve consistently signaling its intent to keep raising short-term rates. While inflation has begun to slow,that the central bank needs to keep hiking rates to make sure its job is done. December’s sales sank 34 percent from a year earlier. Excluding the steep slowdown in sales that occurred in May 2020 near the start of the pandemic, sales last month skidded to the slowest annual pace since November 2010.
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