Mortgage rates rose for their fourth straight week, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage now sitting at 6.54%. Existing home sales also fell to a 14-year low, the National Association of Realtors reporting a figure of 3.84 million for the month of September.
Market Domination welcomes Realtor.com chief economist Danielle Hale to talk about this week’s wave of housing and mortgage data.
“A lot of consumers were expecting mortgage rates to trend down for longer than they have. The economic strength that we’ve seen in… the most recent job market reading has caused a bit of a rebound in interest rates, including mortgage rates,” Hale explains to Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton. “And so consumers have been a bit caught off guard. And we haven’t seen the improvement yet. I think people were waiting for more and we just haven’t seen that yet.”
Hale anticipates mortgage rates to sit just above 6% this time next year. Currently, she is seeing “extraordinarily resilient” home prices as new homebuyers pull out of their housing market searches.
“And so that the fact that supply only just meets demand has kept prices relatively elevated. So I don’t think we’re going to see a lot of pricing relief unless we add a lot more construction,” Hale tells Yahoo Finance.
Hale expands the conversation to explain how homebuyers can improve their odds of a lower mortgage rate, as well as nationwide trends in rent prices.
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This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.
