Mortgage Rates Hit 13-Year High

It was not a good week for mortgage rates, according to the Freddie Mac weekly mortgage survey…(Freddie Mac)

  • 30-YR FIXED: The average contract rate jumped 55 basis points to 5.78%, this is 295 basis points higher than one year ago. Wow!
  • 15-YR FIXED: The average contract rate jumped 43 basis points to 4.81%, this is 257 basis points higher than one year ago.

Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s Chief Economist, said the 50 bip jump was the biggest increase in 45 years…

  • “Mortgage rates surged as the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage moved up more than half a percentage point, marking the largest one-week increase in our survey since 1987…These higher rates are the result of a shift in expectations about inflation and the course of monetary policy. Higher mortgage rates will lead to moderation from the blistering pace of housing activity that we have experienced coming out of the pandemic, ultimately resulting in a more balanced housing market.”

Rates, of course, are up because of the hit bonds took this week as investors fled from all major assets…

  • UMBS 30YR 4.5 was down 242 basis points this week opening at 98.55 this morning.
  • 10-YR yield was up 32 basis points this week opening at 3.34% this morning.

NOTE: Black Knight put out a release on how the parabolic rise in rates could impact refis. “Just 472K remain. This is the smallest this population has ever been, since at least 2000, when we began tracking this metric.” (Twitter) With, conservatively, 80 million mortgage properties in the U.S., that means just 0.5% of properties are available to refi.

Current look at majority refi lenders…

via GIPHY