Two in Three Americans Think It's a Bad Time to Buy a House

Americans looking to buy a house are currently facing conditions that make it hard for anyone but the very wealthy to afford buying a home. Elevated home prices combined with mortgage rates that have rebounded from historic mid-pandemic lows to levels last seen in the early 2000s are causing major headaches for would-be home buyers. To make things worse, many Americans had to dip into their savings during the past few years of high inflation, making it very hard to save for a sizeable down payment. Add geopolitical tensions and uncertainty about the impact of AI on the labor market to the mix and renting suddenly seems like a very attractive, or possibly the only feasible option.

The latest results from Gallup’s annual Economy and Personal Finance poll show that current conditions have really spoiled Americans’ appetite to buy houses. This year’s survey, conducted April 1-15, shows that two thirds of U.S. adults think that now is a bad time to buy a house. While that marks a slight improvement from the last four years thanks in part to a slight moderation in home prices, it's still a complete reversal from pre-pandemic years, when the majority of respondents would say it was a good time to buy a house.

According to Gallup, we're currently seeing the lowest levels of confidence since the question was first asked in 1978. Before 2022, the share of people thinking it was a good time to buy a house had never dropped below 50 percent – not even during or in the aftermath of the 2008 housing crisis.