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Housing market shows no sign of thawing as spring buying season nears
Although the housing market traditionally thaws every spring, aspiring homebuyers may want to consider an extended hibernation given what is an exceptionally tough market this year.
Home prices last year rose an average of 6.7% in the country’s 20 biggest metro areas, according to the latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller data. Across the nation as a whole, housing prices rose than 5% over the last year. Driving the increase are higher mortgage rates, which makes homeowners reluctant to sell their properties given the elevated costs of finding a new place, coupled with a dearth of homes on the market.
“It’s just a sort of toxic brew that means that people are not willing to sell houses, and the people who are actually looking for them don’t have a lot of stock, or don’t have a lot of affordable options,” said Javier E. David, managing editor for business and markets at Axios, told CBS News.
The average rate on a 30-year mortgage is now 6.90%, up from 6.77% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. The difficult conditions have cast a distinct chill on the market — only 4.8 million homes changed hands in 2023, the lowest level since 2011, according to the mortgage lender. Freddie Mac expects home prices to rise 2.6% this year and 2.1% in 2025.
“While the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index continues to show home price resiliency against surging borrowing costs, it also highlights continued headwinds for the housing market, namely elevated mortgage rates and a severe lack of existing homes for sale,” CoreLogic Chief Economist Selma Hepp said in a report. “And as mortgage rates continue to hover in the 7% range, it will be difficult to convince existing homeowners to move at the current time.”
Meanwhile, stubbornly high inflation has dashed hopes of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates before the spring homebuying season begins.
“We’re in a different place now than we were even a month ago,” David said. “I think markets were expecting the Federal Reserve to start cutting rates sometime in the first half. We’ve had a run of unexpectedly hot inflation data — that means the Fed is not necessarily going to hike rates again, but they’re not in a rush to cut. So all of the hopes and dreams that we had built around this idea that the Federal Reserve was going to be giving us easier policy, the timetable is being pushed back a little bit.”
—The Associated Press contributed to the report.
CBS News
Watch Live: Biden awards Medal of Honor to 2 Union soldiers who hijacked train behind enemy lines
Washington — President Biden is awarding posthumous Medals of Honor on Wednesday to two Army privates who were a part of a plot to hijack a train and destroy Confederate infrastructure during the Civil War.
The president will honor Philip Shadrach and George Wilson for their “gallantry and intrepidity” in carrying out a covert operation called the “Great Locomotive Chase,” which played out 200 miles behind Confederate lines in Georgia in 1862, the White House said.
“In one of the earliest special operations in U.S. Army history, Union Soldiers dressed as civilians infiltrated the Confederacy, hijacked a train in Georgia and drove it north for 87 miles, destroying enemy infrastructure along the way. During what later became known as the Great Locomotive Chase, six of the Union participants became the Army’s first recipients of the newly created Medal of Honor,” a White House official said.
The operation was hatched by James Andrews, a Kentucky-born civilian spy and scout. He proposed penetrating the Confederacy with the goal of degrading their railway and communications lines to cut off Chattanooga, Tennessee, from Confederate supplies and reinforcements.
Andrews, together with 23 other men, infiltrated the South in small groups, coming together north of Atlanta. On April 12, 1862, 22 of the men commandeered a locomotive called The General and ventured north, tearing up railroad tracks and cutting telegraph wires as they went. The men became known as the Andrews’ Raiders.
Shadrach, originally from Pennsylvania and orphaned at a young age, was just 21 when he volunteered for the mission. On Sept. 20, 1861, he left home and enlisted in a Union Army Ohio Infantry Regiment. Wilson, born in Ohio, was a journeyman shoemaker before he enlisted in a Union Army’s Ohio Volunteer Infantry in 1861. He also volunteered for the Andrews’ Raid.
After the operation, both men were captured, convicted as spies and hanged.
“It is unknown why Private Shadrach and Private Wilson were not originally recommended for the Medal of Honor,” a White House official said. “Both were deserving in 1863, and on July 3, 2024, by order of the President of the United States both will be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.”
The ceremony comes as questions mount over Mr. Biden’s future as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, with his public appearances under intense scrutiny following his halting performance at last week’s presidential debate. After the Medal of Honor ceremony, the president is meeting with Democratic governors to address their concerns and chart his path forward.
How to watch Biden present the Medal of Honor
- What: President Biden awards the Medal of Honor
- Date: July 3, 2024
- Time: 4:45 p.m. ET
- Location: White House
- Online stream: Live on CBS News in the player above and on your mobile or streaming device.
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