US housing market freezes as home sales fall to 30-year low

The United States housing market has entered its deepest slowdown in more than three decades, with home sales and housing turnover both falling to levels last seen in the early 1990s. Unlike previous downturns, the current stagnation has not been driven by collapsing prices or a surge in forced sales, but by a structural standstill created by sharply higher borrowing costs. At the core of the slowdown is the mortgage lock-in effect. Millions of homeowners refinanced or bought homes during the pandemic at historically low fixed mortgage rates, often close to 3%. With current mortgage rates now closer ...