Anyone on the market for a new house over the past six years has had rotten luck. Between 2020 and 2022, the median sale price for a home rose nearly 40%, and it has barely tapered off since then. Many prospective homebuyers would say they’ve felt cheated out of this housing market, and a new study says they might have a point.
The housing market ended up bearing a disproportionate cost from successful scammers who filed fraudulent claims filed under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Homebuyers in 2020 and 2021 had to compete with fraudulent recipients of PPP funds who effectively treated the cash as an artificial stimulus and used it for discretionary spending, leaving every competing U.S. homebuyer on the hook.
