Topline
A majority of potential home buyers would consider buying a house they believe is haunted, according to a survey released Tuesday by Zillow, shedding light on just how spooked Americans are by the bone-chilling housing market.
Key Facts
Some 67% of prospective buyers said they could be persuaded to purchase a haunted house, the poll found.
Most of the willingness to coexist with the paranormal comes down to cost, as 35% of all respondents indicated they’d be willing to buy a haunted house if the home were more affordable than comparable, and presumably ghost-free, homes in the area.
Stubbornly high prices, weak inventory and elevated interest rates are “creating a witches’ brew of trouble for would-be homeowners,” Manny Garcia, a population scientist at Zillow, explained in a statement.
Zillow conducted the ghoulish survey in September and October, polling 901 recent and 993 prospective home buyers, weighting results to the population of Americans in the market for a new house.
Key Background
Home loans are more than twice as expensive this Halloween as they were two years ago. Last week, 30-year mortgage rates hit a 23-year high of 7.63%, a far cry from October 2021’s 3.1%. The colossal jump in borrowing costs came as the Federal Reserve hiked the federal funds rate—or the interest rate that banks charge each other—from near-zero to over 5% in a bid to control inflation, partially caused by surging home prices. Interest rates for homes, cars and other consumer loans usually move in line with the federal funds rate, causing mortgage rates to spike as part of the Fed’s anti-inflation kick. Buyers have felt some relief this year, with median home prices down from a record $479,500 during 2022’s fourth quarter to $416,100 in this year’s second quarter, but home prices are still nearly 30% more expensive than they were at the end of 2019, before the pandemic upended the housing market.
Surprising Fact
Housing affordability hit its worst level since the 1980s this summer, according to mortgage data provider Black Knight, looking at how the rise in household income compares to monthly home payments. Perhaps Grady, the ghostly butler in The Shining, would advise prospective buyers too timid to take on a spectral housemate to wait for a housing market “correction.”
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