Rising mortgage rates weigh on spring homebuyers

00:00 Brad

Mortgage rates for the week ending April 17th are out. Yahoo Finances Claire Boston joins me now with the numbers. Hey Claire.

00:08 Claire

Hi Brad. This week the 30-year mortgage rate averaged 6.83%, that is up 20, more than 20 basis points from 6.26 6.62% a week ago. The 15-year mortgage rate is also up to 6.03%, versus 5.82% last week. So this is a result of some of that market volatility we have seen in the past couple weeks, bond yields rose quite a bit and we are now seeing that flow through to mortgage rates. What I’m really curious to know is what’s going to happen next week. In the past couple of days, some of that volatility has eased a tiny bit, and that means we’re probably not going to be in for another week of a really big jump like this, but you know, certainly this is not good news. It is a lot more expensive now to get a mortgage than it was just a couple of weeks ago.

00:58 Brad

Now it’s interesting kind of putting what we’re hearing from Freddie Mac’s chief economist Sam Khater talking about the spring home buying season off to a stronger start, might be on a relative basis though, that they’re talking about it because we were at a 7.1% average for the 30-year fixed rate mortgage this time a year ago. And we’re also comparing that up against what we’re hearing from some of the home builders, of course DR Horton who’s reported earnings, talking about the sluggish start to the spring home buying season. So that’s particularly interesting. We’ve also got some new data on Americans changing plans for major purchases like buying a house due to President Trump’s tariffs. Just walk us through that.

01:42 Claire

Right. So Redfin put out a survey today, uh, that said nearly one in four US residents, 24%, are considering canceling a major purchase, you know, that includes like a home or a car because of these tariff policies. And this survey was conducted April 10th to the 14th, so it’s very, very fresh. And I think that that’s kind of one of the first signs we’ve seen that tariffs and these recession fears are really flowing into how consumers make their decision. So I’m quite curious to see what happens in the next few weeks with some of that spring home buying data. Um, you know, it could be a little bit more rocky from here.

02:23 Brad

All right. Just to recap the numbers, 30-year fixed rate mortgage averaging 6.83%, 15-year fixed rate mortgage averaging 6.03%. Claire, thanks so much for breaking this down for us.

02:37 Claire

Thanks, Brad.