Pending Home Sales Fall To New All-Time Low As New US Home Sale Prices Hit Record in January

There might be no place like home — even more so if you live in one of America’s hottest housing markets — but most Americans will have to settle for apartment living so long as prices are this high. That’s well-understood by would-be buyers, including ones who are swearing off homeownership altogether. But on the other end of the deal, current homeowners are learning about this mismatch the hard way.

• This week, pending home sales fell to a new all-time low as buyer appetite continued to dwindle — a product of expensive borrowing costs and a dearth of affordable housing.
• The report comes after the median sales price of a US home hit $419.2K in the fourth quarter — the median for new US homes hit a record $446.3K in January, per HUD.

Something’s gotta give: There has been downward momentum in the sale price of used homes, which fell below $400K in Jan. 2025. Still, that was 4.83% higher than in Jan. 2024. In general, homeowners aren’t amenable to selling their homes for less than what they think they’re worth — even as fewer and fewer Americans are willing to buy.

Is there any way out? With nine months of inventory on the market, the supply of homes isn’t the problem — the location and affordability are. Matters could even further worsen, given recession developments. And worsening matters, developers could be sidelined too, given hints of weaker demand — a record 106K single-family homes that were approved still had yet to be built, per Reuters.