Increases in mortgage rates shrinking house hunters’ buying power

With mortgage rates seeing small upticks over the last few weeks, how much home buyers can afford to spend on a home has gotten slightly smaller. The potential for borrowing costs to go higher has home buyers getting more aggressive in their house hunt.

According to a Redfin survey, nearly half of people who plan on buying a home would feel a greater sense of urgency to make a purchase if rates were to climb. Ordinarily, increases in home loan rates would put a damper on the volume of home sales but data shows that not happening at all.

“If rates were to rise much further in a typical market, we would expect there to be a turning point: Buyers would go from feeling more urgency to buy to feeling less urgency,” said Redfin’s chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “But this isn’t a typical market.”

Meanwhile, conforming no-point 30-year fixed mortgage rates are averaging 3.875 percent and 15-year rates are near 3.125 percent.

Do you have a question for Real Estate & Mortgage Analyst Mehran Aram? Submit your queries about a home purchase, refinance, or reverse mortgage via Aramco.biz, social media (#AramcoReport), or over the phone at (877) 700-0942 and your questions may be featured in an upcoming article.