Found 32 blog entries tagged as economy.

After a two-year boom, the United States housing market finds itself at a pivotal moment — but pivoting to what, exactly?

This spring should have been a busy time for home sellers. Instead, the season was a dud, stalled by a dramatic spike in mortgage rates that stunned even industry experts with its chilling effect on the market.

The frenzied environment we had become accustomed to — with its eye-popping price increases and bidding wars that left buyers dejected and sellers giddy — suddenly seemed to be a thing of the past. While buyers stood on the sidelines, recalculating their much larger mortgage payments, sellers began to realize that offers of $100,000 or more over asking might not be forthcoming.

And over in the rental market,…

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For the past two years, anyone who had a home to sell could get practically any asking price. Good shape or bad, in cities and in exurbs, seemingly everything on the market had a line of eager buyers.

Now, in the span of a few weeks, real estate agents have gone from managing bidding wars to watching properties sit without offers, and once-hot markets like Austin, Texas, and Boise, Idaho, are poised for big declines.

The culprit is rising mortgage rates, which have spiked to their highest levels since the 2008 housing crisis in response to the Federal Reserve’s recent efforts to tame inflation. The jump in borrowing costs, adding hundreds of dollars a month to the typical mortgage payment and coming on top of two years of home price…

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