Everyone who has been scrolling through real estate listings must've noticed the climbing prices. Over the past two years, the housing market has experienced extreme demand and limited supply.

At the same time, inflation has ballooned across the world, including in the U.S. To get it under control, the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates in March 2022, making borrowing more expensive on top of higher base prices.

In 2020, the average list price on an American home was $374,500, with interest rates on 30-year mortgages sitting at 3.11%.

Today, the average interest rate is 7.06%, with the average home price up to $525,000.

So if you purchased a home two years ago with a 30-year mortgage and 20% down, the average purchase would have cost you $536,551 in principal and interest over the course of your loan.

The average purchase in the current market would cost you $1.11 million in principal and interest over the course of a 30-year mortgage with 20% down. That's a difference of over half a million dollars by the time you paid off your mortgage.

It's still a bit too early to decide if home prices are on a downward trend. While there tends to be a seasonal downward shift as summer wears on, this year the numbers were larger than the average.

Usually, we see a decrease of 2% from June through August, but this year it was 6%, which could be promising for would-be buyers.

However, it's important to analyze these numbers in a broader context. In August 2022 prices were 7.7% higher than they were at the same time in 2021.

This means that looking from a longer-term perspective, home prices could still be rising. We'll have to wait to see the fall and winter numbers to have a more definitive understanding of the market.

One of the reasons why prices remain so high is that there is a shortage of inventory.

While new builds increased by 12.2% in August, this is partially attributed to supply chain issues.

Many builders were simply unable to get the supplies they needed to work on their projects, and many of these supplies finally made it to them at the tail end of summer in one big burst.

Because fewer Americans can afford to buy a home, there is more demand in the rental market. Understanding the situation, this is exactly where developers have been focusing their energy.

If we look at multi-family housing projects with five units or more exclusively, new builds skyrocketed, up 28.6%.

This brings us to one of the main factors why a temporary uptick shouldn't be interpreted as a cause to relax.

Permits for future home-building projects were down 10% at the end of summer.

So as we look forward, we can expect to see even fewer options on Zillow and other real estate listing platforms in the affordable housing market, even as homes at higher price points sit on the market for months at a time.