Home Prices Keep Breaking Records Despite High Mortgage Rates
15 minutes ago
New data from December puts 2023 in the books as a weird one for the housing market, with home prices rising to new heights despite the highest mortgage rates in decades.
Average nationwide home prices rose 5.5% in 2023, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index released Tuesday. For the month of December, prices rose 0.2% after seasonal adjustment, hitting a record high for the seventh month in a row, S&P Dow Jones Indices said.
The surge in home prices has gone hand-in-hand with soaring mortgage rates, a double-whammy hit to affordability that’s put home ownership out of reach for buyers with average incomes.
The Federal Reserve’s campaign of anti-inflation interest rate hikes throughout 2022 and 2023 pushed the average rate offered to a 30-year mortgage to nearly 8% this fall,…
