Home sales dropped in June. Prices hit an all-time high. These two facts are supposed to be related. They're not.
Mortgage rates stayed high. Buyers stayed home. Sellers still got record prices from the three people who showed up. Economics textbooks call this "supply and demand." Real people call it "getting f*cked at the closing table."
The median home price reached a number nobody wants to say out loud. Sales fell month over month because Americans finally did the math and realized they'd rather live in their parents' basement than pay $3,200 a month for a two-bedroom with aluminum wiring. Smart move. Really showing the market who's boss by not participating.
Here's what happened: Nothing. June was hot. People didn't want to move boxes in the heat. Mortgage rates did what they always do, which is exist at whatever level makes you angry. Prices went up because someone somewhere paid the asking price, and that someone is now eating ramen until 2034.
The real story is that home sales "disappointed." They disappointed whom exactly? The National Association of Realtors? Your cousin Derek who just got his license and needs to make a sale before his wife finds out he quit his job at the plant? Prices hit an all-time high in the same month sales dropped, which means the market is functioning exactly as designed: separating desperate people from their money while everyone else watches from the sidelines and pretends they're "waiting for the right time."
Retail traders are now scanning Zillow for "investment opportunities" in markets they've never visited, convinced they'll time the bottom perfectly. They won't. They'll buy in October at an even higher price and tell themselves it was strategic.
The chart doesn't care that you can't afford a house. It never did.
Photo by Richard Bell on Unsplash
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