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The awesome power of high mortgage rates

Housing Wire

Housing professionals already know that high mortgage rates are bad for business. But with mortgage rates ascending past 7% according to HousingWire’s Mortgage Rates Center , those hopes have so far been dashed in 2024. Bad for sellers Prospective home sellers may not notice incremental changes in mortgage rates.

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Mortgage rates helped by the Fed’s moderate stance

Housing Wire

Mortgage rates had a chance to break to new highs this year, but the Federal Reserve took a moderate tone at the last Fed meeting. We saw the benefit of lower mortgage rates with the last two existing home sales reports, which showed growth. Then mortgage rates rose, facilitating five weeks of negative purchase application data.

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Why is housing inventory growing with higher mortgage rates?

Housing Wire

The mortgage rate lockdown premise says that if rates rise, inventory can’t grow meaningfully. The idea is that nobody will trade their low mortgage rates to buy another home — even though this happened every week last year. With mortgage rates higher, will this stop inventory from growing year over year?

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Sluggish net new listings signal that the lock-in effect is not over

Inman

percent decline in net new listings and a 2 percent decrease in contract signings, driven by mortgage rate fluctuations, according to HouseCanary. Despite a rise in total inventory compared to 2022 and 2023, the market is still behind historical inventory averages as sellers avoid entering a higher rate environment.

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A sub-7% mortgage rate brings holiday cheer

Housing Wire

The holidays have come early for the mortgage industry. Mortgage rates fell below the 7% threshold this week as markets prepared for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s announcement on Wednesday. The 30-year, fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.95% for the week ending Dec. on Thursday.

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Are we seeing a mortgage rate lockdown?

Housing Wire

The premise of a mortgage rate lockdown is simple: so many American households have such low mortgage rates that some will never move once rates rise, which then locks up housing inventory. Typically we have a natural set of new listings each year; inventory rises in the spring and summer and then falls in the fall and winter.

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Why home prices haven’t crashed even with high mortgage rates

Housing Wire

The most underreported housing story I’ve seen this year is that even with mortgage rates rising to 8%, the number of homes that took price cuts before they sold was 4% below 2022 levels. This happened even with higher home prices and higher mortgage rates in 2023. Weekly inventory change (Dec.

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