Elevated mortgage rates and home prices are creating challenges for many homebuyers, and 86% said May was a bad time to buy — a new high in Fannie Mae surveys dating to 2010.
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Almost nine in 10 Americans polled by mortgage giant Fannie Mae said May was a bad time to buy — a new high in survey records dating to 2010.
Fannie Mae’s monthly National Housing Survey also found that nearly two-thirds of household financial decision makers thought it was a good time to sell.
But elevated mortgage rates and home prices are creating affordability challenges for many homebuyers, and many have given up hope that they’ll come down in the next year, said Fannie Mae Chief Economist Doug Duncan.
Doug Duncan
“While many respondents expressed optimism at the beginning of the year that mortgage rates would decline, that simply hasn’t happened, and current sentiment reflects pent-up frustration with the overall lack of purchase affordability,” Duncan said, in a statement. “This is most clearly evidenced by our ‘good time to buy’ component falling to a new survey low this month.”
Source: Fannie Mae National Housing Survey, May 2024.
Only 14 percent of those polled in May said it was a good time to buy, down from 20 percent in April, tying a survey low last seen in November 2023. With the percentage who said May was a bad time to buy increasing from 79 percent to a new survey record 86 percent, the net share who said May was a good time to buy fell 13 percentage points from April to May, to -72 percent, a survey low.
“On the other hand, homeowners’ perception of home-selling conditions declined only slightly and remains largely positive after a steady increase over the last few months,” Duncan said. “This suggests to us that, despite the so-called ‘lock-in…