Home prices have jumped 54% since 2020, even as home sales sit near a 30-year low - a mix that almost never happens at once.
Rising prices usually signal strong demand, but Harvard's new housing report shows buyers are tapping out under high mortgage rates and flat wages.
A new Harvard report on housing lays out how far the gap between prices and paychecks has stretched.
The monthly payment on a median-priced home is now $3,100, up from $1,700 in early 2020.
To handle that payment, a buyer needs an income above $120,000 - nearly double the $66,000 it took five years ago.
A few figures from the report:
Wages haven't kept up with any of that.
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The report's headline finding isn't prices - it's that demand has dropped sharply.
Existing home sales are near their lowest level in three decades, with homeownership rates dropping for the second straight year.
Even the rental market is slowing - the rise in renters in early 2026 was less than half what it was a year earlier.
The job market is part of why - employers added 1.5 million workers in 2024 but only 116,000 in 2025.
Consumer confidence has done worse, falling more than 20 points in 2025. It then hit an all-time low in April after the Iran war pulled it down further.
People without job security don't buy houses, and they don't move either.
The usual fix for high prices is more homes, but that isn't happening.
New construction starts slipped 1% over the past year, with single-family starts falling 7%.
Builders aren't rushing to flood the market with inventory at these rates. That leaves housing in an awkward spot - too expensive to buy into, with no wave of new supply coming to push prices down.
Harvard's researchers describe the current market as "depressed demand" sitting on top of a long-running supply shortage, with both sides frozen.
Buyers can't afford to move in, while sellers won't give up their old low mortgage rates to move out.
Nothing about that breaks until rates fall, incomes rise, or prices give. So far, none of those three is moving fast.
Watch the Fed's rate path heading into 2026 - any meaningful cut would be the first real lever to shake the market loose.
The market isn't crashing - it's just stuck.
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