Skip to main content

Home buyers end the mortgage rate wait, will swallow higher prices to make a deal now

People are generally staying in their homes longer, says Mark Eppli, director of the Graaskamp Center for Real Estate at the University of Wisconsin. In 1988, for example, “your average time in a house was 10 or 11 years.” Today, he says, it’s 20 years.

“That’s really long; inventory’s going to stay low,” Eppli says. “With high interest rates making housing all the less affordable…it’s going to keep people in their houses even more.”