{"id":720152,"date":"2026-06-23T00:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T00:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/720152\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T00:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T00:20:12","slug":"homeownership-costs-outstrip-inflation-with-home-costs-up-nearly-10000-since-pandemic-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/720152\/","title":{"rendered":"Homeownership costs outstrip inflation with home costs up nearly $10,000 since pandemic: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Owning a home has become a money pit, according to a new report \u2014 with the costs of insurance, taxes, mortgage payments and repairs growing dramatically faster than inflation<\/a>. <\/p>\n

American homeowners in 2025 spent about $28,500 per year on basic ownership costs, on average.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s up from the $20,000 the same things just six years earlier in 2019, before the pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"AHome costs are rising faster than inflation since the pandemic, leaving many Americans struggling to afford buying. Konstantin L \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an increase that\u2019s outpaced inflation by about $3,000 \u2014 with 2019\u2019s $20,000 supposed to be worth about $25,500 in 2025 due to inflation, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.<\/p>\n

And the results of those costs are clear: far fewer people are buying homes today than they were before the pandemic. <\/p>\n

Only about 4 million homes have sold each year since 2023 \u2014 compared to the roughly 5.5 million selling annually before the pandemic, the Journal reported.<\/p>\n

The biggest cost increase is obvious to anyone who has bought a home in the last few years: interest rates.<\/p>\n

Mortgage rates were less than 3% during the pandemic, but more than doubled to over 6% by 2022 and have held steady since.<\/p>\n

That means people\u2019s buying power has nearly halved \u2014 buyers on a $2,500 monthly budget could afford a $517,000 house with a 20% down payment under the 3% rate, while the same budget could only afford a $384,000 house at today\u2019s 6.5% mortgage rate. <\/p>\n

\"AHomeownership costs have increased nearly across the board since the pandemic, leading to fewer home sales. mapo \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Maintenance costs meanwhile have risen by<\/a> nearly 40% since the pandemic, with Americans spending an average $9,000 on home upkeep in 2019 \u2014 and $12,500 in 2025 as labor and material costs soar.<\/p>\n

Insurance costs also soared across the country after years of severe weather, ranging from historic hurricanes to increasingly violent wildfires. Iowa has watched home-insurance rates climb 91% since 2021, while Florida rates have jumped 35%, according to the Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even fundamentals like electricity costs are climbing \u2014 one kilowatt hour of power cost about 12.5 cents in 2019, but cost nearly 19 cents as of March 2026.<\/p>\n

Many Americans simply can\u2019t keep up with the costs.<\/p>\n

In addition to sales slumping, foreclosure rates hit a six-year high across America in<\/a> 2026, jumping 26% in the first quarter from the same time a year earlier, the Journal reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That placed the number of properties foreclosing at around 119,000, compared to the roughly 30,500 foreclosed in 2020.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a return to pre-pandemic levels \u2014 2019\u2019s fourth quarter saw about 110,000 foreclosures \u2014 but one which has been increasing steadily year by year, while foreclosure rates before the pandemic had been steadily dropping since 2010 and the 2008 recession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Owning a home has become a money pit, according to a new report \u2014 with the costs of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101,989,112,1349,194],"class_list":["post-720152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-houses","tag-markets","tag-residential-real-estate","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}