00:00 Josh
Mortgage rates inching lower but holding relatively steady over the past several weeks. Here with a closer look is Yahoo Finance’s Claire Boss. Claire.
00:08 Claire
Hi Josh.
00:10 Claire
So this week we have mortgage rates at 6.27% and that is a a slight decline from a few weeks ago or from this past week. That being said, we have been holding in this 6.3% area for quite a bit of time now. And um we’re not really seeing a lot of action on the home buying side at these levels. Uh sometimes you would think that maybe this would bring buyers out to the market, but what we’re really seeing is that these levels are not low enough to really revive the housing market at all. Um I think what’s going to happen in the coming weeks is quite interesting here because um we do have Treasury yields which uh mortgage rates closely track, moving lower today and that may translate to slightly lower mortgage rates in the weeks ahead.
00:46 Josh
Let’s talk about the government shutdown. continues. you can place your bets. Claire’s going to go on for a week, another month. The longer that goes on, how does that dynamic impact mortgage rates?
01:10 Claire
Definitely. So mortgage rates are very sensitive to any kind of economic data and so we are missing economic data in this moment. We were supposed to get a CPI report yesterday that is going to come. It’s going to come a little late. We’re not going to get jobs data at least for now and those are all things that can move mortgage rates. And so we’ve talked a little bit about how in this moment, everyone’s kind of flying blind and that may keep treasury yields and just the general economic environment, you know, a little bit staid. So it is possible that we will stay in this narrow 6.3% range for a bit longer.
02:00 Josh
How are home sales and mortgage applications holding up right now? What are you seeing?
02:04 Claire
Yeah, I mean, it’s not a disaster. They have been moving down uh week over week. So, and weekly data is pretty volatile, but we are seeing a decline in both purchase and refi applications. However, they are up from 2024 levels, but we’re really in a competition right now. Can we beat last year, which was the worst year for sales in 30 years? It’s not a very high bar.
02:40 Josh
House hunters in general, are they still sitting on those sidelines? Is that what we see?
02:44 Claire
Yeah, we’ve been seeing a lot of house hunters staying on the sidelines right now. Affordability is just really hard. And we have this weird dynamic where rates are coming down, inventory is creeping up, there’s more stuff for buyers to look at, but home prices are still rising. And so a lot of buyers are looking at what’s available and they’re saying, you know, I don’t like this, maybe I’ll wait, maybe I’ll keep renting. Uh we’re just not seeing a lot of activity and unless rates really fall a lot, which would be quite bad because that would mean potentially we’re in a recession or some other very bad economic circumstance, you know, there’s not really a catalyst to get this market going.
03:25 Josh
Claire, great to have you on set. Thank you.
03:28 Claire
Thank you.