Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience Mel.

IMO, it's always possible to look deeper into the past and ask, "Didn't it all start here?" and there's always some truth to that viewpoint.

But in the past, whenever mortgage rates went up, houses became less affordable at the prices they had reached, which reduced supply, which made it harder to sell, which moved prices lower.

Not this time.

What changed isn't that prices had reached ridiculously high levels. That, if anything, would have made owners more eager to sell before prices dropped back to where people can afford to buy.

No. What changed is that mortgages had been at historicaly low levels for several years, so that when rates shot up, as much as 90% of existing mortgages had been locked in at fixed rates that were less than half of current ones.

That made it crazy to sell if you didn't have to move, say because of a job or having more kids or aging parents move in and requiring more space. Moving just because you wanted a nicer home went away for a while. It simply wasn't affordable for nearly anyone. And it was financially unsound even if you did have the money.

That, at least, is how I see things.