March 2023

The housing market situation is fundamentally different from that during the great recession of 2008. One of the key reasons why house prices have not declined significantly is because of the very low inventory of homes available for sale. There were fewer than one million existing homes available for sale in January 2023 compared to over 3 million in any month during 2007-2008.

High home prices coupled with high interest rates made purchasing a house increasingly unaffordable. As a result, demand for home purchases fell. Pending sales across the United States decreased by over 40% from mid-June to the end of 2022.

In this short article, we look at three different consumer mortgage metrics when comparing the economic conditions today to the Great Recession over a decade ago.