Home Sales Plunge in May

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Home Sales Plunge in May

© Senior Adult Couple in Front of Sold Home For Sale Real Estate Sign and Beautiful House. (Shutterstock.com) by Andy Dean Photography

24/7 Insights

  • Home sales had their worst May ever, driven by high mortgage rates and rising house prices.

Home sales had their worst May ever. High mortgage rates and rising house prices drove the drop. Redfin pointed out that there have been only two months in the last decade when sales were lower. Other data shows home prices at record prices.

Houses were for sale for record prices and were scarce. The median price of a home reached $439,716, up 5.1% year over year. Fixed-rate mortgages at 7.02% made prices even more difficult for buyers.

Prices soared in some markets. They were up 17.6% year over year in Anaheim, close to LA. They rose 15.1% in Cleveland, one of America’s least expensive home markets.

The markets with the largest price drops were Cape Coral, Fla., down 2.7%, Honolulu, down 2.1%, and Austin, down 1.1%. Honolulu is among the most expensive home markets in America.

Redfin Senior Economist Elijah de la Campa summed up the market: “Sales are sluggish because high homebuying costs are making both house hunters and prospective sellers skittish. And with so few homes for sale, buyers in some markets are getting into bidding wars, which is helping push home prices to record highs.”

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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