Median home prices jump to $413,500
It’s harder than ever to afford a home in the U.S., with higher mortgage rates claiming a bigger share of incomes and prices still rising at doubledigit rates across most of the country.
Four in five U.S. metro areas and all the major Texas metros saw double-digit home price gains in the second quarter, according to the latest report from the National Association of Realtors.
Nationally, the median existing single-family home price surpassed $400,000 for the first time, rising 14.2 percent from a year ago to $413,500, the association reported. Prices grew at a slightly slower pace than in the first quarter, when they rose 15.4 percent year over year.
Among the four largest Texas markets, San Antonio now tops the others with a 22 percent increase, with the Alamo City being the only market in the state to not see a slight slowdown in price growth.
The monthly bill on a typical existing single-family home with a 20 percent down payment jumped to $1,841 in the second quarter, according to
the Realtors group. That’s up 32 percent, or $444, from the first quarter and a 50 percent jump from a year earlier. Families spent about 24 percent of their incomes on mortgage payments in the second quarter, up from 19 percent in the previous three months and 17 percent last year.
In the second quarter, 148 of the 185 metro areas measured by the Realtors group — or 80 percent — had double-digit annual price gains. That was up from 70 percent of regions in the first quarter.
Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates soared this week in a continued volatile market as the key 30-year loan rate jumped back over 5 percent. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reports that the 30-year rate rose to 5.22 percent from 4.99 percent last week. The average rate on 15-year, fixedrate mortgages, popular among those looking to refinance their
homes, increased to 4.59 percent from 4.26 percent.