Housing Sales · Prices · Rates
Six decades of American homebuying, in one place.
Annual sales of new and existing single-family homes, median transaction prices, and the 30-year fixed mortgage rate from 1963 through 2024. Sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Association of Realtors, and Freddie Mac.
Compiled by Census · NAR · Freddie Mac
Period 1963 – 2024
Frequency Annual, calendar-year
Recession bands NBER
About the Data
Three federal series, one continuous record.
New home sales are reported monthly by the U.S. Census Bureau as the seasonally-adjusted annual rate of single-family transactions; figures here are calendar-year averages. Existing home sales come from the National Association of Realtors' closed-transactions universe, which has tracked Multiple Listing Service activity since 1968. Mortgage rates are the 30-year fixed conventional series from Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey, weekly since 1971.
Notable Cycles
Four genuine peaks, four wholly different recoveries.
The 1978 peak collapsed under Volcker's 18.5% mortgage rates. The 1986 peak gave way slowly through the savings-and-loan years. The 2005 peak — driven by subprime origination — fell 53% in three years and did not recover until 2020. The 2021 pandemic peak unwound in eighteen months as the Fed lifted rates from zero to 5.5%.
Definitions
- Sales
units, K or M
- Price
median, current $
- Rate
30-yr fixed, % APR
- SAAR
Census
- EHS
NAR
- PMMS
Freddie Mac
- Recession
NBER monthly