Americans looking to buy a house are currently facing conditions that make it hard for anyone but the very wealthy to afford buying a home. Very high home prices combined with mortgage rates that have surged from historic mid-pandemic lows to the highest level since the early 2000s are causing major headaches for would-be home buyers. To make things worse, many Americans had to dip into their savings during the inflation crisis, making it very hard to save fore a sizeable down payment. Add a sprinkle of economic uncertainty caused by tariffs into the mix and renting suddenly seems like a very attractive, or possibly the only feasible option.
The latest results from Gallup’s annual Economy and Personal Finance poll show that current conditions have really spoiled Americans’ appetite to buy houses. This year’s survey, conducted April 1-14, shows that only 26 percent of U.S. adults think that now is a good time to buy a house. While that marks a slight improvement from the last two years thanks to cooling inflation and a slight moderation in home prices, it's still way down from 53 percent in 2021 and even further from pre-pandemic levels.
According to Gallup, we're currently seeing the lowest levels of confidence since the question was first asked in 1978. Before 2022, the share of people thinking it was a good time to buy a house had never dropped below 50 percent – not even during or in the aftermath of the 2008 housing crisis.
