Housing Sales · Prices · Rates
Six Decades of U.S. Home Sales, Prices & Mortgage Rates
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.
Annual U.S. Home Sales (1963–2024)
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
How U.S. Home Sales Are Counted
The Almanac's combined-sales view stacks two distinct federal series. New-home sales come from the U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Construction, which tracks single-family contract signings on builder-supplied homes — roughly 12–15% of all U.S. residential transactions in a typical year. Existing-home sales come from NAR, which counts closed sales of single-family homes, condominiums, townhomes, and co-ops reported through Multiple Listing Service feeds. The two series are summed (after unit-converting the new-sales figure to millions) to produce the total annual transaction count.
The Three Modern Cycles
Three drawdowns of -40% or more define the post-1968 record. The 1978 peak collapsed under Volcker's 18.5% mortgage rates, bottoming in 1982 at 4.41M total sales. The 2005 peak of 8.36M was the subprime cycle — combined sales fell 47% by 2011 to 4.49M. The 2021 peak at 6.89M unwound in eighteen months when the Fed lifted rates from 0% to 5.5%, and combined 2024 volume of 4.74M is the lowest since 1995. For the structural backdrop on each cycle, the Volcker, subprime, and pandemic longforms walk through the macro mechanics in 2,000+ words each.
How to Read the Annotations
Rust dots mark NBER recession years. The chart shades each formal recession period and annotates the cyclical peaks and troughs in the master series. The toolbar on the right of the chart toggles among ranges (20-, 30-, 40-, 50-year, all). For a single-year deep dive — full Census/NAR/Freddie Mac numbers plus the relevant context — click any year in the master data table or browse the full year archives.