How are prices faring as National Homeownership Month begins?

More importantly, what has the Biden administration done to ease rising costs?

How are prices faring as National Homeownership Month begins?

The start of June has the White House celebrating National Homeownership Month, but how have house prices been faring in recent months?

According to CoreLogic, not very well. Home prices across the US continued to surge in the early months of 2022 as buyers rushed to snag homes before the mortgage rate hit 5% in April.

The surge in March saw a 20.3% growth over February, marking the highest year-over-year price change in more than 35 years. Tampa, Florida led the pack for the biggest price increase at 34.8%. Meanwhile, the rest of the top 20 cities reported double-digit price increases for the year ended March.

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Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, said the steep rise in prices indicates that homebuyers are feeling the pinch to bid competitively for the few remaining homes on sale.

"Home shoppers were motivated to lock in a mortgage rate before price increases, rising rates, or a combination of the two delivered a knockout punch to their aspirations," Hale said.

“Eventually we expect a more moderate pace of listing price growth, with for-sale homes that sit for longer than the record pace we’ve seen in recent months,” she added. “Somewhat counterintuitively, conditions shifting back in buyers’ favor will likely benefit many of today’s sellers, nearly three-quarters of whom also plan to buy a home this year.”

Read more: Biden takes action on housing affordability crisis

In anticipation of National Homeownership Month, the Biden administration released an action plan two weeks ago that aims to close the housing gap in five years, “starting with the creation and preservation of hundreds of thousands of affordable housing units.”

Biden also called for incentivizing local zoning reforms and improving existing Federal housing programs while promoting the sale of government-owned single-family homes to owner-occupants or non-profits rather than to large investors.