LOS ANGELES — The number of U.S. homes that typically change hands as people relocate for work, retire or trade up for more living space hasn’t been this low in nearly 30 years.

About 28 out of every 1,000 homes changed hands between January and September. That is the lowest U.S. home turnover rate going back to at least the 1990s, according to an analysis by Redfin.

The home turnover rate represents the number of homes sold, divided by the total number of existing sellable properties. While sales data show whether more or fewer homes are selling in a given period, the home turnover rate helps illustrate how homeowners are staying put longer.

“It’s not healthy for the economy that people are staying put,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin.

The home sales turnover rate through the first nine months of this year is down about 30 percent from the average rate over the same time periods between 2012 and 2022.

Traditionally, a breadwinner’s new job or a growing family’s need for more space motivate homeowners to sell and relocate. The fact that fewer homes are changing hands suggests there are fewer opportunities for employment mobility or perhaps selling and buying at today’s prices and mortgage rates is unaffordable.

“If people are stuck, it’s reflective of how the economy is stuck,” Fairweather said. “We’re in a low-hire, low-fire labor market and I think that this goes hand in hand with that.”

U.S. employers added just 22,000 jobs in August, according to the Labor Department, down from 79,000 in July and well below the 80,000 that economists had expected.

Government hiring data is on hold during the shutdown, so the Labor Department’s tally of hiring in September was never released, but earlier this month a survey by payroll company ADP showed that the private sector lost 32,000 jobs in September.

Meanwhile, several large companies, including Microsoft, General Motors, Amazon and Target, have announced job cuts.

The slowing job market has many Americans increasingly concerned. That is not a good recipe for home sales.

Another factor keeping a lid on home sales: Many homeowners who bought or refinanced at rock-bottom mortgage rates in 2020 and 2021 have little incentive to sell and buy a home at current home loan rates.

The U.S. housing market has been in a slump dating back to 2022, the year mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows that fueled a homebuying frenzy at the start of this decade.

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes sank last year to their lowest level in nearly 30 years. Sales have been sluggish this year, although they accelerated last month to their fastest pace since February as mortgage rates eased. The average rate for a 30-year mortgage fell last week to its lowest level in more than a year.

While lower rates boost home shoppers’ purchasing power, borrowing costs remain too high for many Americans to afford to buy a home following years of skyrocketing prices. The median sales price of a previously occupied U.S. home has risen 53 percent over the past six years.

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A large-scale survey of landlords and housing operators in Oregon showed a mixed picture for the multifamily market, with average rents rising across the state despite a modest increase in vacancies.

Rents rose 3 percent from a year ago to $2.11 per square foot. The vacancy rate in the Portland and Vancouver metro area grew to 5.47 percent, up from 4.49 percent a year ago.

The data comes from Multifamily NW’s biannual Apartment Report. The organization surveys 460 properties totaling 42,000 units.

Multifamily brokers saw a silver lining in the data.

“I feel like we’ve kind of hit a bottom for valuation,” said Greg Frick, co-founder of HFO Investment Real Estate, in an interview. “We have seen a pick-up in investment activity.”

Multifamily buyers have stopped expecting bargain-basement deals, said Frick, who serves on the Apartment Report’s advisory committee. “They’ve come up a little, and sellers have come down a little,” he said.

Multifamily transactions grew to 93 deals in the Portland metro area during the first nine months of the year, up from 80 for the same period in 2024. Dollar volume likewise jumped 55.3 percent to $1.53 billion. Capitalization rates hovered around 6 percent.

Little new supply is expected to come online: Only 2,000 units were under construction this fall, leaving the metro area’s pipeline at its lowest level since 2011. That should help buoy rents, but does little to address the ongoing housing deficit, analysts said.

Multifamily NW hosted a release event for the report at the Oregon Convention Center. Speakers gave a dizzying blizzard of starkly negative economic data and positive anecdotes.

Mayor Keith Wilson, in the keynote speech, gave several examples of what he calls “boom loop” thinking that will contribute to Portland’s economic revival.

Wilson pointed to proposed development at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry district and the Broadway Corridor. Visitors are coming back to Portland, with hotel occupancy up 5 percent from 2024, he said.

The James Beard Public Market is under construction downtown and efforts are underway to revitalize some of Portland’s most blighted areas, including parts of the Old Town- Chinatown neighborhood and Water Avenue in Southeast Portland.

“We are going to build back Portland better right now, with or without the federal government,” he said.

The city is also working to help developers build housing, including by waiving system development charges for housing for three years, by expanding video permit inspections and eliminating bureaucratic bottlenecks.

“We will not hold up your dreams in Portland,” Wilson said.

Wilson’s upbeat remarks were immediately followed by a notably dreary economic forecast by Mike Wilkerson, director of economic research for ECOnorthwest. By some economic indicators, Oregon and Washington are in a recession while most of the rest of the country continues to grow, he said.

The state has lost 18,300 jobs in the past year, a majority of which were in Multnomah County, he said. Portland is one of only five of the top 50 metro areas in the U.S. seeing job loss.

“We are very much the exception to the rule,” Wilkerson said. He added that Oregon and the U.S. are likely to see population begin to decline unless the nation allows more immigration.

Nationally, Moody’s Analytics recently put the odds of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months at 48 percent.

The share of cost-burdened renters in the Portland area remained unchanged in the past decade despite a well-funded push to build affordable housing. Those efforts have only succeeded in keeping the numbers stable, Wilkerson said.

“We would certainly be worse had we not done what we have done,” he said.

Industry officials said Portland must do more to attract jobs, housing and economic activity.

“We need to figure out a way to be competitive,” Frick said. “As a region, we rest on our laurels a little bit — that people will come no matter what. I think that’s changed.”

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LOS ANGELES — For years, skyrocketing home values and a modest market inventory gave homeowners the upper hand in transactions. That’s no longer a given.

Across the country, it’s getting tougher for sellers to drive a hard bargain. A dearth of home shoppers who can afford to buy and uncertainty about the outlook for the economy, jobs and mortgage rates is putting pressure on sellers to give ground at the negotiating table.

In some markets, mainly in the South and West, homeowners eager to sell are more likely to give buyers a better deal. This could include a lower price, up-front money to reduce the buyer’s mortgage rate, and funds for closing costs and any repairs or improvements that may pop up after the home inspection.

The reasons: Would-be buyers balk at what they view as unreasonable asking prices, while at the same time new construction is giving buyers more options and putting pressure on sellers to make their homes more appealing.

As a result, while the national median home listing price rose slightly in July, some metro areas saw a decline, signaling a reversal in the power dynamic between buyers and sellers. It’s rare to see the type of eye-popping bidding wars that boosted home values by roughly 50 percent nationally earlier this decade. Low-ball offers are more common.

Nevertheless, the housing market remains mired in a slump. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes are running about 1.3 percent below where they were through the first seven months of last year, when they sank to their lowest level in nearly 30 years.

The national median home listing price rose slightly in July from a year earlier to $439,450, according to Realtor.com. The real estate listing company found the most a homebuyer who earns the median U.S. household income can afford to spend on a home is $298,000. The analysis assumes a 20 percent down payment and a 30-year mortgage at a fixed rate of 6.74 percent. By those criteria, 7 out of 10 home shoppers are priced out of the market.

The housing market has been in a rut since 2022, when mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows. The number of homes available for sale sank while prices kept rising.

Nationally, more homes are going on sale and remaining unsold longer because buyers have been unwilling or unable to make a deal. Active listings — a tally that encompasses all homes on the market except those pending a finalized sale — increased in July for the 21st month in a row, climbing nearly 25 percent from a year earlier, according to Realtor.com.

The inventory of homes for sale across the U.S. has increased gradually as the market has slowed and is now at a level where supply and demand are more balanced. But in states like Texas and Florida, the number of homes on the market has climbed sharply, partly because those states are hotbeds of new home construction.

Home shoppers may now have more leverage relative to sellers in the South and West, where home inventory has risen in the single digits, compared to pre-pandemic levels. Conditions are tougher in markets in the Midwest and Northeast, where the supply of homes remains 40 percent and 50 percent below pre-pandemic levels, respectively, according to Realtor.com.

After roughly two months on the market and three open houses, Doug McCormick’s home has yet to receive a single offer.

The retired business owner and his wife initially listed the 4-bedroom, 4.5-bath house located in Evergreen, a mountain community about 30 miles west of Denver, for $1.3 million. They lowered their asking price to about $1.28 million. That, too, failed to bring in a buyer.

McCormick, 80, says he’s hoping mortgage rates ease a bit and bring out more buyers. But he’s also considering just renting the property.

“That’s something that’s kind of in the back of my mind,” he said. “I keep reminding myself you only need one buyer.”

McCormick’s situation is not unique. As demand has slowed, more sellers have resorted to lowering their initial asking price — often multiple times — to no avail.

“Even though we are seeing a substantial amount of price reductions, sometimes it’s not enough to move the home; it’s still sitting,” said Annie Foushee, an agent with Redfin in Denver.

The median home listing price in Austin fell 4.9 percent in July from a year earlier, while in Miami it dropped 4.7 percent. Among other metro areas that had sharp drops in their listing price were: Chicago (4.4 percent), Los Angeles (4.2 percent) and Denver (4 percent).

In markets where buyers now have the upper hand, sellers who can afford to wait are often opting to pull their listing rather than be pressured into drastically reducing the price.

Tammy Tullis put her home in the Miami suburb of South Miami on the market in June. But the 4-bedroom, 3.5-bath house didn’t receive many offers initially, so she dropped her $2.8 million asking price by $100,000. That helped drive turnout during an open house, but she received only low-ball offers.

“They were like $400,000 to $500,000 off the mark,” said Tullis, 51.

Last month, the finance consultant took the listing down. She may relist it soon.

“I want to sell, but I’m not in a rush-rush,” Tullis said.

The Trump administration has pushed the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, saying it would help the housing market. But homebuyers – and politicians – should keep in mind that the central bank directly influences only short-term rates, while most mortgages are based on the yield of the 10-year Treasury.

And while lower mortgage rates would boost home shoppers’ purchasing power, they also could bring in more buyers, giving sellers less incentive to keep lowering prices.

Economists generally expect the average rate for a 30-year mortgage to remain near the mid-6-percent range this year.

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LOS ANGELES — Real estate investors are snapping up a bigger share of U.S. homes on the market as rising prices and stubbornly high borrowing costs freeze out many other would-be homebuyers.

Nearly 27 percent of all homes sold in the first three months of the year were bought by investors – the highest share in at least five years, according to a report by real estate data provider BatchData. Between 2020 and 2023, the share of homes bought by investors averaged 18.5 percent.

All told, investors bought 265,000 homes in the January-March quarter. That was an increase of 1.2 percent from the same period a year earlier, the firm said.

Despite the modest annual increase, the rise in the share of investor home purchases is more a reflection of how much the housing market has slowed as traditional buyers face growing affordability constraints, according to BatchData.

The U.S. housing market has been in a sales slump since early 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. Home sales fell last year to their lowest level in nearly 30 years.

They’ve remained sluggish so far this year, as many prospective homebuyers have been discouraged by elevated mortgage rates and home prices that have kept climbing, though more slowly.

As home sales have slowed, properties are taking longer to sell. That’s led to a sharply higher inventory of homes on the market, benefiting investors and other home shoppers who can afford to bypass current mortgage rates by paying in cash or tapping home equity gains.

“As traditional buyers struggle with affordability, investors with cash and financing advantages are stepping in to maintain transaction volume,” according to the report.

BatchData analyzes U.S. home sales records to determine which properties were purchased by investors. These could include vacation homes or rentals, but not a homebuyer’s primary residence.

Investors bought 1.2 million homes in 2024, up from an average of 1.1 million homes per year going back to 2020, according to BatchData.

Even so, investor-owned homes account for roughly 20 percent of the nation’s 86 million single-family homes, the firm said.

Of those, mom-and-pop investors, or those who own between 1 and 5 homes, account for 85 percent of all investor-owned residential properties, while those with between 6 and 10 properties account for another 5 percent.

Institutional investors that own 1,000 or more homes account for only about 2.2 percent of all investor-owned homes, the firm said.

And that number could get smaller, amid signs that large institutional investors are scaling back home purchases.

Out of a group of eight of the biggest companies that own and lease single-family houses, including Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent, six sold more homes in the second quarter than they bought, according to data from Parcl Labs.

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