Register a vacation: vacation home sales are down 50% from pre-pandemic levels.

The hottest segment of the housing market, which was previously popular during the pandemic, has now cooled. According to a new report from Redfin, the trend of high demand for vacation homes, driven by increasing remote work and low mortgage rates, has reversed. In March, mortgage applications for secondary homes were down 52% from pre-pandemic levels, which in seasonally adjusted terms is a 13% decline for primary homes. Mortgage applications for secondary homes hit their lowest level since 2016 in February and were nearly unchanged in March.

This is the opposite of what happened in 2020, when the pandemic caused huge demand for secondary homes as wealthy buyers used''historically low mortgage rates and elevated savings rates. Existing home sales in counties with at least 20 percent of vacation homes rose an average of 24 percent in 2020, double that of counties without a large number of vacation homes, according to the National Association of Realtors' 2021 report. Sales of vacation homes rose nearly 17 percent in 2020 and 33 percent year-over-year from January through April 2021.

"There's a huge reversal now because of high interest rates and the overall economic situation," said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin.

"People are worried about a recession, and during a recession the first things that are considered unnecessary, such as secondary housing, are the first to be cut." Mortgage applications for secondary homes have reached''peaked 89% above pre-pandemic levels (defined as the average of January and February 2020) in August 2020. Compared to August 2020, when mortgage applications for secondary homes peaked, applications fell 75% in March. This coincides with the average 30-year mortgage rate falling below 3% in July 2020. In mid-March of this year, mortgage rates hovered around 6.6%.

Who buys secondary homes.

There is still demand for vacation condos, especially in desirable neighborhoods, from affluent buyers who don't have to worry about high interest rates, according to Redfin Phoenix agent Van Welborn. "They're interested in buying now because they believe,'''that they can purchase a vacation home for less than the asking price'.

Demand for secondary homes is also down from last year and from January 2022, when mortgage rates began to rise from historic lows. In March, mortgage applications for secondary homes were down 49% from last year and 71% from January 2022. Mortgage applications for primary residences were down 29% from a year ago and 35% since January 2022. Remote work opportunities have begun to decline, reducing the ability to spend more time in a second home, making them less attractive.

In March 2022, telecommuting jobs accounted for more than 20% of all paid jobs, a huge jump po''compared to less than 10 percent in January 2021. But that surge has been replaced by a sharp decline, according to LinkedIn. In November 2022, only about 14% of paid jobs on LinkedIn offered remote work.

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a housing and economics correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on Twitter @SwapnaVenugopal and sign up for our daily money newsletter here.