US mortgage rates fall slightly, sending 30-year home-loan costs to 6.56%
Sellers vastly outnumber shoppers; the 36.3% gap is the biggest in records dating to 2013
MORTGAGE rates in the US fell, keeping home-loan costs at a 10-month low.
The average for 30-year, fixed loans was 6.56 per cent, down from 6.58 per cent last week, Freddie Mac said in a statement.
House hunters have largely been holding out for lower rates and prices, keeping transaction numbers subdued. A measure of contracts to buy US resale homes fell for a second month in July, the National Association of Realtors reported on Thursday (Aug 28).
Sensing sluggish demand for their properties, sellers now are pulling back as well. Last month, the market had about 14,000 fewer sellers than in May, according to Redfin. It was the first decline since July 2023, when the supply of available homes had dropped to a near-historic low, the brokerage said.
“Homebuyers are spooked by high home prices, high mortgage rates and economic uncertainty, and now sellers are spooked because buyers are spooked,” said Asad Khan, senior economist at Redfin.
“Some sellers are delisting their homes or choosing not to list at all after seeing other houses sit on the market for weeks or months, only to fetch less than the asking price.”
But sellers still vastly outnumber shoppers who are actively in the market. The 36.3 per cent gap is the biggest in records dating to 2013, and some cities in Florida and Texas have more than twice as many sellers than buyers, according to Redfin’s estimates.
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