Existing Home Sales Drop to Lowest Full Year Total Since 1995

In 1992, in a few parts of the country, the bottom fell out. It was my first and only chance to get a place of my own.
Today’s inflationary depression is even worse, but prices are still rising due to endless fed inflation and greed
. So sales will fall even lower and more business will cease.
The crash must be VERY deep to do any good this time.
My grown kids are praying for it.

1995 was around the time housing was the MOST affordable.

NOT addressed:
1. Overall home sales per total U.S. Population. Assuredly this number would be lower than at many points for the last 50+ years.
2. Overall home sales per “household”. Because households have declined in size over the decades, this number probably would be lower than #1.
3. # of total housing “units” per population. Include rental units — apartments plus houses; and broken out separately within the rental category, houses vs. other units that are not “owner” occupied — in this calculation. Assuming #2 is correct — that household sizes have gone down — then perforce the # of “units” per population has to be up, unless the homeless population is higher than published. An adjustment to this “Units” number could be factored in when adding in or subtracting out the guesstimated homeless people.
4. Therefore, we might to be able to arrive at a better appraisal of what percent of the U.S. population is living in “owner”-occupied units, whether detached or attached (townhomes, condos). This number might be better at appraising whether Americans are overall better or worse than preceding generations in terms of being able to “own” a home.
5. Break out the “owners” by % equity that they have in their homes — i.e., mortgage balances versus what % of the mortgages are paid off.
6. #5 should be graphed — perhaps a bell curve would show where the median +/- standard deviation(s) of “ownership” by percentage is highest. Example: if 50% of “owners” owe, say, 50% or more of their mortgage balance, then we’d say that that is a fairly high percentage, and minimizes the “benefit” of what numbers overall of home “ownership” really means. It could mean, for example, that most people never pay off a mortgage and are in effect renting from the banks — “you will own nothing and be happy”? Hmm? Conversely, this # could be broken down to show what % of homes are owned outright without any mortgage; and this number could be broken down even further by price range — for example, probably people on average who own homes worth more than, say, $5-million are more likely to own outright than the working Joes and Janes who make barely $100,000 a year and whose homes are valued at only $400,000. That, too, would be another telling statistic as to how “vertical” the well known pyramid of wealth has become — this number could be reviewed historically and likely would show a much wider gap between the wealthy and the “workers” than 50 or 75 years ago.
7. Break out numbers showing house prices as multiples of earnings — do this for every income category. Then break out numbers on mortgage + insurance + taxes as percent of monthly income. Assuredly, this number has gone to the moon in the last few years b/c of rising interest rates.

All in all, Mish, you have homework to do here. I’m not a realtor, and I’m not in any financial field. But all these questions bear on giving a much more thorough picture of the housing market.

In those Don Knotts movies from 60 years ago it seems he was always living in some small town boarding house with many of the secondary characters of the Andy Griffith Show. That’s one way to cope. Nobody was at the table with a cell phone, either.