“It’s a pretty tough time to be a first time homebuyer now,” Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi told Newsweek.

“High mortgage rates are combining with high house prices, and affordability is being crushed. So, first time homebuyers are getting locked out of the market,” he said. “Straight-up buyers are locked in because they’d have to sell the home with a low mortgage rate and buy a home with a higher mortgage rate. And that’s very difficult to do.”

Prospective first-time home buyers may have been galvanized by the turn the housing market took during the pandemic, with record-low mortgage rates encouraging the purchase of homes. But things have changed, and for anyone who did not buy a home then, now it’s just not the right time.

“From the housing perspective, it’s those that were ready to buy homes, maybe had saved a little bit, but had [stuck] in pricing wars over the last year and hadn’t been able to find anything because of the low supply [who are suffering the most],” Thomas LaSalvia, senior economist at Moody’s Analytics, told Newsweek.