{"id":168927,"date":"2025-09-25T21:14:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T21:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/168927\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T21:14:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T21:14:15","slug":"why-were-existing-home-sales-flat-in-august","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/168927\/","title":{"rendered":"Why were existing home sales flat in August?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sales of existing homes were flat in August, according to data out Thursday<\/a> from the National Association of Realtors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The housing market continues to be stuck, with both prices and mortgage rates high.\u00a0Rates have been falling<\/a>, it\u2019s just still a little early to see whether they\u2019ve come down enough to get more would-be buyers off the sidelines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most people who closed on a house in August likely went under contract in June or July, when mortgage rates were still closer to 7%.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we shouldn’t have expected to see much of an impact of falling mortgage rates in this particular report,\u201d said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS. <\/p>\n

Even now that rates are down closer to 6%, she said, the market still feels slow.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven’t seen whether there’s going to be an impact of mortgage rates, and frankly, I think the jury’s still out on whether that’ll be a big boon to the market this fall,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The recent drop in rates has been enough to shave about $150 off the monthly mortgage payment for a median-priced house, Sturtevant said, which is not nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is, though, we’ve been seeing that drop in rates while we’re also seeing home prices continue to rise<\/a>. So we’ve actually seen the fact that home prices are still rising offset any benefit of those declining rates,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Affordability is still a big issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chris Salviati, chief economist at Apartment List, said that\u2019s especially true for first-time buyers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe median monthly mortgage payment has basically doubled in five years. And so you know that’s going to really take some time for folks to be able to get into a market where prices are that high,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mortgage rates coming down is a big factor, Salviati said \u2014 but not the only one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is coming at a moment where the labor market is looking a little bit shakier<\/a> than it has in a little bit here, and so that’s kind of a factor that’s going to push in the opposite direction here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If people don\u2019t feel secure in their job, they\u2019re going to be more hesitant to make the biggest purchase of their lives, Salviati said.<\/p>\n

Still, Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, said mortgage rates do have a way of overcoming people\u2019s jitters \u2014 if they fall enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe unemployment rate is still at under 5% which is implying that 95% of the labor force still has a job, and they respond to lower mortgage rates,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

So if rates stay about where they are or fall a little more<\/a>, Yun is expecting to see home sales increase in the coming months.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sales of existing homes were flat in August, according to data out Thursday from the National Association of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,63,99,11522,22945,171,53537],"class_list":{"0":"post-168927","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-home-prices","12":"tag-home-sales","13":"tag-markets","14":"tag-mortgage-rates"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}