More milestones amid the mind-boggling milestones of our crazy times.

In Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey for January, released today, the percentage of people who said that now is a bad time to buy” a home jumped to 70%, a record worst in the data going back to 2010. The “bad-time-to-buy-a-home spike started in February 2021.

Particularly younger people were getting frustrated: Of Respondents between 18 and 34 years of age, a record 83% said it’s a bad time to buy a home.

“Younger consumers – more so than other groups – expect home prices to rise even further, and they also reported a greater sense of macroeconomic pessimism,” according Fannie Mae’s press release.

“Additionally, while the younger respondents are typically the most optimistic about their future finances, this month their sense of optimism around their personal financial situation declined,” said Fannie Mae.

“All of this points back to the current lack of affordable housing stock, as younger generations appear to be feeling it particularly acutely and, absent an uptick in supply, may have their homeownership aspirations delayed,” said the report.

And the National Housing Survey hit another milestone: The percentage of people who said that now was a “good time to buy” a home dropped to a record low of 25%.

Of respondents between 18 and 34 years of age, a record low of 15% said it’s a good time to buy:

The results of the survey “are consistent with our forecast of slowing housing activity in the coming year,” said Fannie Mae. 

That’s already happening. Actual home sales, even on a seasonally adjusted basis, have been dropping for months. Sales of previously owned houses, condos, and co-ops in December fell by 8.3% year-over-year, according to the National Association of Realtors, the fifth month in a row of year-over-year declines, amid tight supply, rising mortgage rates, and lots of frustrations:

But it’s a very good time to sell a home. The percentage of respondents who said it was a good time to sell a home dipped to 69%, matching the pre-pandemic record of June 2018:

These are milestones amid the mind-boggling milestones of our crazy times.

Fannie Mae started this survey in 2010, one of the data-collection efforts born out of the Housing Bust when everyone was trying to get a better grip on the housing market. So we don’t know what the respondents thought as home prices were actually declining in 2009, and buyers were scarce, and forced sellers powered the market.

The survey covers a range of housing-related topics. One of the questions is about rents. And consumers are getting the drift.

The respondents expected that on average, rents would increase by 7.4% over the next 12 months, a new record in the data going back to 2010:

The respondents may just be a tad slow. In 34 of the largest 100 cities, the median asking rents spiked by 15% to 28% as tenants are having to pay for the Fed’s reckless monetary policies that made the wealthy far wealthier.

Courtesy of Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET