Housing in U.S. Cools as Rate Rise Hits Sales

After a roller-coaster decade of boom-bust-boom, the U.S. housing market is going downhill just when many economists thought annual sales would be heading up. The housing market's underlying fragility is emerging as outside influences that fueled a two-year rebound are receding. Mortgage interest rates are rising from record lows as the central bank withdraws its stimulus, and investors, who had helped drive national prices up more than 20 percent as they went on a buying spree, are now retreating. "The very low rate environment and the high level of investment activities really masked how weak the housing market was," Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at Irvine, California-based CoreLogic Inc., said in a telephone interview.



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