>
Bombshell Video Gaetz Corners Trump Prosecutor Pomerantz Who Pleads Fifth in Tense Showdown
Ben Shapiro Sinks Even Lower! Unthinkable Underhanded Tactics Against Candace Owens!
France sends combat troops to Ukraine battlefront
Crypto Crossroads: Enthusiasts vs Industry on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC)
The first reverse microwave in the U.S.: you can have it at home to save energy while cooking
BREAKTHROUGH : Lightsolver Makes Ultrafast Laser Based Computers
$300,000 robotic micro-factories pump out custom-designed homes
$300,000 robotic micro-factories pump out custom-designed homes
Skynet Has Arrived: Google Follows Apple, Activates Worldwide Bluetooth LE Mesh Network
The Car Fueled Entirely by the Sun Takes Huge Step Towards Production
A new wave of wearable devices will collect a mountain on information on us...
Star Trek's Holodeck becomes reality thanks to ChatGPT and video game technology
Blazing bits transmitted 4.5 million times faster than broadband
Mortgage rates in the United States climbed to the highest level since November 2023 last week, as higher-than-expected inflation readings have dashed hopes of the Fed starting to cut rates soon.
As Statista's Felix Richter reports, according to Freddie Mac, the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage increased to 7.10 percent in the week ended April 18, making it difficult for many would-be homebuyers to afford a house.
Along with the Fed's aggressive rate hikes, mortgage rates have climbed by almost 4 percentage points since the beginning of 2022, threatening to push more and more potential buyers out of the market, especially as high rents and other costs of living make it increasingly difficult to save for a significant down payment.
Making things even more difficult, high mortgage rates don't just affect the demand side of the market.
Supply is also constrained as prospective sellers stay put to avoid taking out a new mortgage at a much higher rate than their current one.
This in turn has kept home prices elevated, or at least kept them from fully reflecting the significantly higher mortgage rates compared to two years ago.
"When rates go up, people hunker down and don't spend," mortgage broker Rocke Andrews told Realtor.com.
"They've been told for so long that rates are coming down, so they just postpone."
And they made need a little more patience.
Last week, Fed chair Jerome Powell said that policymakers were in no rush to cut rates, making it unlikely for mortgage rates, which tend to follow the same trajectory as the Fed's policy rate, to come down meaningfully anytime soon.
In fact, according to brokerage Redfin, U.S. homebuyers face the prospect of having to pay a "record" amount in monthly mortgage payments to buy a house amid extremely high prices and elevated mortgage rates.