You had housing questions. An economist answered them.

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• 00:01

  This is The Indicator from Planet Money.

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  I'm Waylon Wong.

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  Existing home sales in the U.S.

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  Are near record lows.

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  Daryl Fairweather, chief economist for the real estate site Redfin, says interest rates are a big reason why.

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  Ever since mortgage rates went up in 2022, both buyers and sellers backed off the market.

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  What you get, Daryl says, is a stagnated market.

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  Buyers can't afford to buy at these high prices and high mortgage rates, and sellers

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  don't want to move because that would mean giving up their very affordable mortgages they got during the pandemic.

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  This year, we've seen a bit of an improvement.

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  I think that things are starting to relax a bit, but it's very, very slow going.

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  So it's no surprise that a lot of buyers and sellers are having a hard time right now.

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  We see it in the data, and last week we heard about it directly from you.

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  The Indicator held a virtual event for our NPR Plus and other qualifying supporters.

• 01:00

  We called it Ask an Economist, and it was all about trying to make sense of the stagnant housing market.

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  Adrian Ma, my fellow co-host, and I, and more importantly, our...

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  Audience got to put our questions to Daryl.

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  It was like our very own Colin show.

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  It was fun, lively, and full of insights.

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  So today on the show, we're excited to be able to share with you an audio excerpt

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