America’s foremost housing cheerleader is “disappointed.” It’s hard to blame him.

At the (considerable) risk of trafficking in hyperbole, sales of previously-owned homes in the US posted a catastrophic decline in data released Thursday.

Maybe “catastrophic” overstates the case. Maybe not. I’ll let readers decide. Here’s the visual:

As you can see, the monthly decline was the second-largest since the collapse witnessed around the onset of the pandemic.

Of course, the weather was bad last month, and it wasn’t lost on economists that January would likely show a meaningful decline. Consensus expected a 3% drop in transaction closings. The actual pullback, though, was nearly 8.5%.

“The decrease in sales is disappointing,” the NAR’s Lawrence Yun sighed, adding that “below-normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation this January make it harder than usual to assess the underlying driver of the decrease and determine if [the] numbers are an aberration.”

I’m compelled to make the obvious joke: It does tend to be cold in January, Lawrence, and sometimes it even snows. Humor aside, the fact that the drop was especially pronounced in the south testifies to Yun’s weather-based explanation. (That region was disproportionately affected by an ice storm.)

Note that this is the first time the annual pace of existing home sales slipped below four million since June, and only the second time since September of 2024.

That the deceleration comes as sellers outnumber buyers by 47% is disconcerting. Mortgage rates are nearly a full percentage point below the post-pandemic highs, and buyers are securing the largest discounts versus list in over a dozen years. In other words: This is a good time to buy. But people still can’t afford it.

“Affordability conditions are improving… due to wage gains outpacing home price growth and mortgage rates being lower than a year ago [but] supply has not kept pace and remains quite low,” Yun went on.

The median existing home price in January was $396,800, the lowest since February of 2025 but up slightly versus the same period a year ago. It was the 31st consecutive YoY gain.

Maybe — and I’m just tossing this out there — the problem is that the typical American family needs a 30% raise just to be able to comfortably afford the median home.