Excluding the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, September’s existing-home sales rate was the lowest since 2012, when the housing market was just beginning to recover from the subprime crisis.

Compared with September 2021, home sales were down 23.8%.

The high interest rates applied by the U.S. Federal Reserve (FED) to fight off inflation are presently affecting housing market, which is highly sensitive to such restrictive monetary policies.

Specialists pointed out that although the increased house prices has slowed down as demand weakened, the scarce supply keeps prices too high.

In September 2022, average housing price increased to $384,800 (8.4% more than in 2021), and there were 1.25 million second-hand homes available (0.8% less than in the same period of 2021), experts explained.

The specialists also said that if September’s house sales pace continues to rise, the market would need 3.2 months to exhaust current inventory, compared to 2.4 months a year ago.

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