Over 80% of Americans think it's a bad time to buy a house

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Americans don't feel good about the prospect of buying a house right now. 82% think it's a "bad time to buy" a new home, according to a Fannie Mae survey. Affordability has plunged due to soaring mortgage rates and low inventory levels. Get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in business, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley — delivered daily. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy Four out of every five Americans believe it isn't a good time to purchase a house, as spiking mortgage rates and low inventory levels fuel an affordability crisis. In Fannie Mae's National Housing Survey for July, 82% of respondents said it was a "bad time to buy" a new home, the highest level on record since the mortgage financier started its poll in 2010. And just 64% of the people surveyed by Fannie Mae believe it's a good time to sell a house. The poll comes at a time when housing affordability has plunged to a 37-year low, per data from Black Knight, with mortgage rates soaring but dwindling inventory levels keeping the market tight. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has risen from under 5% to nearly 7% over the past year, according to Freddie Mac, with the Federal Reserve's most aggressive interest-rate hiking campaign since the 1980s pushing up borrowing costs. Prices have also been squeezed due to historically low supply levels, with the number of available units plunging 14% to just over 1 million over the 12 months before June 2023. The data suggests that Americans are still pessimistic about the US housing market despite a barrage of positive economic news over the past few months – with growth beating forecasters' expectations, inflation cooling toward the Fed's 2% target, and unemployment holding steady at under 4%. "While consumers are reporting confidence in the components related to their personal financial situations, it's unlikely we'll see housing sentiment catch up to other broader economic confidence measures until there is meaningful improvement to home purchase affordability," Fannie Mae's chief economist Doug Duncan said. "Unsurprisingly, consumers continue to attribute the challenging conditions to high home prices and unfavorable mortgage rates," he added.