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Home for sale, in Escrow, in Laguna Woods, California.

Scott Mill | CNBC

Anyone out there buying a home in the resale market knows that collectibles are slim. They’re about to get even skinnier.

The number of homes for sale this month was 7% higher than in June last year, according to Realtor.com. But just in the past week, that comparison has turned negative, with the number of homes for sale falling below year-ago levels for the first time in 59 weeks.

New listings in the last week of June were down 29% from the same week a year earlier. This is a larger drop than the previous weeks.

With mortgage rates higher than ever, topping 7% again Thursday for 30 years, according to Mortgage News Daily, homeowners have very little incentive to sell their homes. The vast majority of homeowners who have mortgages have rates of less than 4%, and some are as low as 3%.

A tighter housing market in the future means that housing prices are unlikely to subside. Prices peaked last June, after rising 45% from pre-pandemic levels. They started to fall because mortgage rates had doubled in a matter of months. But prices fell to January lows, according to the latest S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index, even though interest rates remain high and sales slow.

“The continued recovery in home prices is broad based,” Craig Lazzara, managing director at S&P DJI, said in a statement.

Pending saleswhich measures contracts signed on existing homes, fell nearly 3% in May from April, according to a report released Thursday by the National Association of Realtors.

“Despite the slow pending contract signings, the housing market is resilient with approximately three offers per listing,” NAR chief economist Lawrence Yoon said in a statement. “The shortage of housing stock continues to fully inhibit housing demand.”

On the flip side, homebuilders in the country were among the biggest beneficiaries of the tight market, seeing sales jump 12% in May compared to April, according to the US Census. Higher mortgage rates were less of a factor, as builders, some of whom had their own mortgage guns, bought lower rates for buyers. In May, there were twice as many homes sold but not started as there were a year ago.

While single-family housing is finally on the rise, it is still well below historical levels. Builders have also been in short supply since the Great Recession, meaning the market was in short supply long before the pandemic-induced housing.

“Bottom line, for all the excitement in homebuilders over the need for more supply, the current domestic market is stagnant and in a serious case of stagflation with little going on but very high prices,” writes Peter Boockvar, chief executive officer. Investing in Blaakley Financial Group.

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