5 charts show that Americans are deciding it's a raw deal to buy a house

To start, total spending on new homes plummeted in recent months and now sits at the same levels seen just before the COVID crisis. While buyers are spending more on homes, the decline in spending implies fewer sales are taking place.

Spending on, and sales of, existing homes "has not yet been as great" as that for new homes, UBS said. But existing-home data lags that of new homes since it tracks contract closings instead of initial signings, the bank added.

Pending home sales tumbled in June and now sit near their historical average. Pending sales are among the most reliable forward indicators of housing activity, meaning the latest decline will likely translate to weaker sales later in the summer.

Experts aren't expecting a bounceback in July, UBS said. Consensus estimates call for another decline, and real estate marketplace Redfin holds a similar outlook.

"Home sellers are increasingly having to lower their expectations," Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, said in a July report on pending sales. "Many homebuyers have turned to the rental market amid such high home prices, but now with rental prices growing, I expect many will return to the housing market by spring of next year."

Perhaps the clearest sign of buyers' frustration comes from Fannie Mae's sentiment data. The share of surveyed Americans saying it was a good time to buy slid to another record low in June, while the share of those believing it's a good time to sell reached an all-time high.

High home prices were the predominant reason for the massive gap, Doug Duncan, Fannie Mae's chief economist, said in the July report. Renters looking to buy homes in the next few years saw an even larger decline in homebuying sentiment, reflecting the higher barrier-to-entry faced by first-time buyers.

"It's likely that affordability concerns are more greatly affecting those who aspire to be first-time homeowners than other consumer segments who have already established homeownership," Duncan said.

It's not just buyers taking a breather. Builders have also retraced some of their recent jump in construction, most likely due to early indicators of weakening demand. Single-family housing starts, while choppy, fell through the end of last year and 2021.

Permits — a more forward-looking indicator of homebuilding activity — staged a steeper decline this year. Taken together, it seems builders are hoping to prop up demand and avoid flooding the market with fresh supply.

Even the marketplaces that fuel homebuilding are reverting to more normal levels. Lumber costs, which skyrocketed in the spring alongside home prices, have quickly reversed their gains and now sit at their lowest level since late last year.

Demand, then, is weakening throughout the market. From homebuyers to builders to suppliers, everybody is growing tired of the housing sector's melt-up.