A senior economist has flagged three things that will determine whether the U.S. housing market turns a corner this September—or gets worse. Elsewhere, foreclosures are surging nationwide under Donald Trump, with one in every 3,603 homes hit with a filing in July. The Massachusetts home where Lindsay Clancy's three children were found dead was quietly sold for over $100,000 under value, and homebuyers are still waiting for mortgage rates to hit the "magic number" that could finally get them off the sidelines.
Here's this week's Newsweek housing market roundup: Another tough month for the U.S. housing market has come to an end, marked by weeks of shrinking demand and rising borrowing costs, but experts are still holding out hope that things might take a turn for the better in September. Three things will tell us what American homeowners and buyers can expect this month, according to Jake Krimmel, a senior economist at Realtor.com. The number of homes entering foreclosure and homes repossessed by lenders nationwide continued increasing in July month-over-month and year-over-year, as Americans struggle to keep up with their mortgage payments, according to new data by real estate and property data provider ATTOM.
With borrowing costs still rising as the war in Iran fuels uncertainty over the U.S. economy, one in every 3,603 housing units nationwide had a foreclosure filing in July, for a total of 39,906, up 1 percent from June and up 10 percent from a year earlier. This increase “shows that financial pressures remain a factor for some homeowners,” Rob Barber, CEO at ATTOM, said in a statement, even as he pointed out that foreclosure activity remains relatively low when compared to historical standards. Lindsay and Patrick Clancy’s former Duxbury, Massachusetts, home, where the couple’s three children were found dead, was quietly sold to a former prosecutor less than a year after the tragedy, property records mentioned by several news outlets show.
Patrick Clancy first told The New Yorker in October 2024 that the home had been sold earlier that year, though he did not name the buyer. All that’s left is me and Lindsay.” The buyer and new owner tried to block a juror viewing at a pretrial hearing in June, saying through his lawyer that the visit would be “massively disruptive” to his day-to-day life. Mortgage rates were supposed to go down just below the 6 percent mark through the course of 2026, giving some respite to struggling homebuyers, experts once believed.
That did not happen, and the national 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is now averaging 6.66 percent after weeks of climbing following the start of the war in Iran. These increases have more or less killed the rebound of the U.S. housing market experts were expecting would be triggered by improvements in affordability this year. Americans are holding off buying a home for now as they face still-climbing prices and stubbornly high borrowing costs.
But they are still holding hope that mortgage rates will come down to a level the country has not seen since 2022, according to a new survey. Contact Newsweek editor on this story: Edward Pearcey.
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