Dive Brief:

• Mortgage rates, home prices and demand for houses will continue to trend upward for the rest of the year, Forbes magazine predicted on Monday.

• Real estate writer Erin Carlyle based her forecast on interviews with industry experts, who said housing inventory will remain too low to satisfy the demand from buyers, and homebuilders will continue to focus on move-up and luxury homes rather than affordable products. Prices, which rose 5.8% in 2014, could increase by another 5.5% by the end of the year, she wrote.

• Carlyle also said many owners of existing homes will continue to hold onto houses they would rather sell because they can’t move them for the price they want. Contributing to that problem, the article noted, is the number of homes "underwater," which means the balance of the owner's mortgage loan is greater than the value of the home.

Dive Insight:

The sum of those parts, Carlyle said, is tight inventory, and that means "homes are moving like hotcakes." She quoted Redfin Chief Economist Nela Richardson: "One-third of homes sell in two weeks or less in the markets we track."

The article implied that a lack of inventory and of affordably priced homes is stifling homeownership, which, at 63.7% of the population, is at its lowest level since 1993.