US housing market may show the biggest slowdown in many years, Bloomberg reports. Buyers are under pressure from rising mortgage rates, while prices are growing faster than incomes.

Sales dropped third straight month in June. Purchases on new homes are the lowest in eight months. Inventory of houses that has been declining for many years started to grow, since many buyers stepped aside. Home prices in May grew by 6,4%, and this is the smallest gain since the beginning of 2017. Shares of large building company PulteGroup Inc dropped 4,9% after it announced fall in orders by 1% compared with last year, mentioning increase in mortgage rates as a reason.

Analytics forecast further slowing of price growth: it will be 5% this year and 3% in 2019.

Inventory increase was 32% in Portland, 24% in Seattle and 12% in San Jose.

Meanwhile, market experts say that taking account strong support of labor market and high economic growth rate, there will be no big drop of the market.

Data of S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index, which tracks values in 20 cities of US, grew by 6,6% during 12 months ending in April. Taking into account seasonal adjustment, it showed lowest monthly growth in 10 months as readings for New York, San Francisco and Washington were lower.

Ownership of the house is still unaffordable for many Americans, including buyers of first houses and young people. Average price grew in June to record level of $276900.