Mortgage rates fell this week after surpassing 7% for the first time in 20 years last week
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.95% in the week ending November 3rd, down from 7.08% the week before,
A year ago, the 30-year fixed rate stood at 3.09%.
The rapid rise has been fueled by the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented campaign of hiking interest rates in order to tame soaring inflation
The combination of the central bank’s rate hikes, investor’s concerns about a recession and mixed economic news has made mortgage rates increasingly volatile
The Fed announced yesterday it would raise its benchmark interest rate by another 75 basis points, the sixth rate increase this year and the fourth-consecutive hike of that size.
Following the Fed’s meeting on Wednesday, Chairman Jerome Powell said that the possibility of a “soft landing,”
In which the economy cools without crashing into a recession, has narrowed but it is still possible
Most homes are priced based on comparable properties that sold in the past six months, a period which does not capture today’s much-higher rates and buyers’ inability to afford them
With household incomes lagging inflation and borrowing costs still rising, we can expect transactions to continue declining, and prices to continue to fall.