20 Depressing Facts About The Housing Crash That Never Seems To End

The U.S. Housing Market Crash 2.0 has just begun – but the bad news never seems to end. Home prices today are the most expensive they’ve ever been, and many of those who would like to buy a home are finding it impossible to enter the market. (More below the video)

In fact, according to a recent analysis, more than half of Americans have been completely priced out of the market at this point. Even affluent investors and big landlords are facing affodability issues as mortgage rates continue to soar. Meanwhile, home builders are suffering with rising construction costs and a declining number of contracts. Consequently, home sales are slowing down, price cuts are surging, mortgage applications are dropping, and the number of foreclosures is going through the roof. Sadly, there are a whole lot of indications that the housing market crash is going to get even worse in the months ahead. Home prices have become so out-of-touch with reality that even some of America’s largest landlords started reducing home buying, according to Bloomberg. KKR & Co.’s My Community Homes, American Homes 4 Rent, Amherst Holdings, and other institutional buyers have slashed buying activity by more than 50%. Mynd Management, a real estate platform that helps investors find, buy, lease, manage, and sell residential investment properties, has advised institutional clients to dial back acquisitions and wait for housing prices to readjust to the interest rate shock. So if even institutional buyers who have millions of dollars at their disposal have paused buying due to affordability issues, how far will housing prices go before they finally fall? In a separate report, Redfin researchers found that as recession rumors gain force, wealthy Americans are rushing to sell their luxury properties. However, sales of luxury homes, defined as those in the top 5 percent in price in a given area, collapsed by 18% over the past month, going down at an even faster rate than non-luxury home sales. On the other hand, housing affordability is set to worsen to levels last seen early in the financial crisis as rising mortgage rates compound high prices, a new S&P Global Ratings report has warned. “By the end of this year, mortgage payments will make up 28% of income for the typical first-time buyer — the highest since the first quarter of 2007 — assuming a 10% down payment,” S&P North American Chief Economist Beth Ann Bovino said in the report. Mortgages shouldn’t exceed 25% of income to be considered affordable, according to the guidelines of the National Association of Realtors. The U.S. real estate industry is facing one disappointment after the other, and conditions will continue to deteriorate as the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates even more aggressively to contain inflation. We’ve been warned that a housing bubble burst would occur and that a day of reckoning would arrive. Now, it is here. And what we’ve seen so far is just the beginning. Another financial disaster is looming in the horizon, and it’s only a matter of time before everything starts to crumble. For that reason, today, we compiled some alarming statistics everyone should know.