According to national property broker Redfin, the total worth of U.S. homes hit a record $46.8 trillion in June 2023. This overtakes the prior all-time high of $46.6 trillion set a year earlier, as a shortage of homes for sale propped up housing values.
The value of U.S. homes rose 0.4% ($166.2 billion) from a year earlier in June and 19.1% ($7.5 trillion) from two years earlier. The housing market has now offset the $2.9 trillion decline in value–set off by rising mortgage rates–that occurred from June 2022 through February 2023.
“The dominance of the 30-year fixed rate mortgage in America is propping up home values,” said Redfin Economics Research Lead Chen Zhao. “Tons of homeowners scored an incredible deal during the pandemic: a 3% mortgage rate for the remainder of their 30-year loan. Now they’re staying put because moving would mean taking on a rate that’s twice as high. This means buyers who are in the market now are duking it out for a very small pool of homes, preventing home values from plunging.”
Roughly nine in 10 homeowners with mortgages have a mortgage rate under 6%, which is nearly a full percentage point below today’s 6.96% average. As a result, just 1% of the nation’s homes have changed hands this year–the lowest share in at least a decade. The number of houses for sale in the U.S. dropped 15% year over year to an all-time low in June, the biggest annual decline in nearly two years.
West Coast Tech Hubs, Pandemic Boomtowns Saw Biggest Drops in Home Value
There are 32 U.S. metropolitan areas where aggregate home value declined from a year earlier in June, bucking the national trend. Eleven of those 32 are in California and seven are in Texas. This analysis includes the 100 most populous metro areas for which there was sufficient data.
The value of homes in Austin, TX fell 9.6% year over year to $388.1 billion in June–a larger decline than any other metro. Next came Oakland, CA (-8.7%), Seattle (-8.1%), San Francisco (-7.8%) and Los Angeles (-6.6%). Rounding out the top 10 are San Jose, CA, Phoenix, Oxnard, CA, Las Vegas and Sacramento, CA.
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