by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:

Higher interest rates are absolutely strangling the real estate industry, and there is no relief in sight.  The sudden shift from a very low interest rate environment to a much higher interest rate environment has paralyzed sales.  As I have discussed previously, very few homeowners that are currently locked into a mortgage at a low interest rate want to sell, because buying a home to replace the one that they are selling would mean taking on a mortgage at a much higher rate of interest.  And millions of potential home buyers have been chased out of the market because of the exceedingly high mortgage payments that they would be facing if they pulled the trigger on a purchase right now.  So sales of previously-owned homes have dropped by more than 32 percent over the past two years.  In other words, about a third of the entire previously-owned home market has already been wiped out.