July 2023 · Markets · 3 min read · by Kinan Sawar, MD — REALTOR® at Shorewest, REALTORS®
Mortgage rates doubled and sales fell off a cliff — yet national home prices barely budged. The explanation is supply, not demand.
By every demand measure, 2023 should have been brutal for prices. It wasn’t. Understanding why is the key to reading this whole cycle.
When rates roughly doubled, affordability cratered and transaction volume fell to multi-decade lows. The intuitive next step — sharply falling prices — never really arrived at the national level.
The reason is the supply side. With homeowners locked into cheap mortgages and refusing to sell, inventory stayed historically scarce. Weak demand chasing even weaker supply leaves prices roughly where they were.
Housing is not the stock market. A demand shock with no supply shock produces a freeze in activity, not a collapse in price. The crash narratives of 2023 underweighted exactly that.
Kinan Sawar, MD — REALTOR® at Shorewest, REALTORS®, serving Milwaukee and Southeast Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington, Racine, Kenosha, and Walworth counties). Email: [email protected] · Phone: (618) 713-2964.
More Milwaukee housing market insights · Free home valuation
Home values and rents are Zillow ZHVI/ZORI estimates for the named area, as of 2026-07-03; incomes and population are U.S. Census (SAIPE, Population Estimates); migration is IRS Statistics of Income. Area-level statistical estimates for information only — not an appraisal, and not financial, legal, or tax advice.