Home Depot CFO issues chilling alarm over ‘frozen’ US housing market — crucial metric plunges to historic low

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As America's largest home improvement retailer, a warning from Home Depot carries weight far beyond the hardware aisle. When people stop buying and selling homes, the effects can spread to renovations, construction and the finances of households counting on their home's value.

Now, the company's CFO, Richard McPhail, has a stark description of the housing market.

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"We continue to operate in what I call 'frozen housing market conditions,'" McPhail told CNBC (1).

On Home Depot's earnings call, McPhail identified the troubling measure behind that description: housing turnover.

"Housing turnover… has been at historical lows. It has never been lower as a percentage of the housing stock," he said (2).

What makes that low especially troubling is how long housing turnover has remained there.

"Every time we've seen it hit the sort of 3% of the housing stock changing hands, over history, it's always bounced up relatively quickly. We've seen housing turnover at these low levels for four years now," he added.

A Redfin analysis (3) shows how deep the freeze has become. Only 2.8% of U.S. homes changed hands during the first nine months of 2025, the lowest turnover rate in at least 30 years.

For homeowners who locked in much lower mortgage rates, selling can mean taking on a far more expensive loan for their next place. Buyers face high prices and borrowing costs of their own. Then-Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell pointed to that lock-in effect back in September 2024, calling (4) the market "in part frozen."

More than two years later, Home Depot is still waiting for it to thaw.

The pressure is already visible in the retailer's business. Customers continued buying supplies for smaller repairs and maintenance in its latest quarter, but larger discretionary projects remained under pressure. McPhail said businesses connected with housing face "tremendous pressure."

A prolonged freeze can leave homeowners with a painful problem: a substantial part of their net worth may be tied up in a property they do not want to sell — or cannot sell on terms they like. And when fewer people move or undertake major projects, the strain can spread to the companies and workers that depend on that spending.