One reason people are having a tough time buying a house these days could be that there aren't all that many for sale. An analysis by Redfin shows that in the first eight months of the year, 2.5% of homes in the US got a new owner. That's the lowest turnover rate in at least 30 years, per CNN. "What this data tells us is that the housing market in 2024 has been really frozen," said Chen Zhao of Redfin. "We said the same thing in 2023 and I think there was this expectation that it couldn't get any worse, but 2024 has been disappointing for the housing market."
A healthier real estate market would have 30 to 40 of every 1,000 homes changing hands, Zhou said; only about 25 of every 1,000 sold from January to August. The turnover data means 37% fewer homes moved in those eight months in 2024 than in the same period in 2021, though sales rose then as the pandemic eased. This year's rate is 31% slower than 2019's. In the 2024 period, 32 out of every 1,000 homes were listed for sale. That's the slowest market in the real estate brokerage's dataset, which dates to 2012.
The lowest turnover rate is in Los Angeles, at 15 houses per 1,000, a drop of nearly one-third since 2019. Phoenix tops the charts at 38 per 1,000. "In a place like Los Angeles, wages aren't keeping up with housing prices," said Jeremiah Vancans, a local Realtor, per CNN. "There is not that much new construction inventory hitting the market, and when it does, it's not at entry-level prices." Mortgage rates are another reason. Most active mortgages have interest rates below 4%, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. "There has been very little incentive for people to sell homes," Zhao said (More housing market stories.)
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