Millions upon millions of U.S. homeowners are currently paying off fixed rate mortgages that were financed when mortgage rates were at historic lows.  If you are one of those homeowners, selling your current home and buying another home that will come with a mortgage at a much higher rate would be very painful financially.  So vast numbers of current homeowners feel "locked in" to their current homes.  At this point, the number of Americans that are selling homes has fallen to a depressingly low level, and the number of Americans that are buying homes has fallen to a depressingly low level.  This isn't going to change until interest rates go down significantly, but the Federal Reserve is very hesitant to reduce interest rates because of the nightmarish cost of living crisis that we are facing.  So our housing market will probably continue to be in a deep freeze for the foreseeable future.

On Wednesday, we learned that sales of existing homes fell once again during the month of April…

Sales of previously owned homes fell by 1.9% to an annual rate of 4.14 million in April, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday.

That's the number of homes that would be sold over an entire year if sales took place at the same rate every month as in April. The numbers are seasonally adjusted.

The pace of sales fell short of expectations on Wall Street, which was forecasting a 4.21 million pace for April.

As Zero Hedge has pointed out, sales of existing homes have almost plunged to levels that we last witnessed during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009.

Normally, when home sales are going down home prices are heading in the same direction, but during the month of April the median price of an existing home actually jumped substantially…