According to Snowden, already high prices, low housing inventory and rapidly rising mortgage rates in 2022 “may have caused would-be buyers to delay homeownership.”
High mortgage rates also reduce the number of homes on the market. Homeowners are more likely to stay put when buying a new home, which means switching to a mortgage with a much higher interest rate.
“Anybody who already owned a house did very well,” said Gray Kimbrough, an economist at American University. “The problem is, if you go from renting to buying in a really expensive market, you don’t have the advantage of all the equity other people built up by happening to own a house in a market that got a lot more expensive.”