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Rising Mortgage Rates Might Finally Be Giving Homebuyers Reason to Ponder

  • July 26th 2018

by UrbanTurf Staff

Rising interest rates might finally be giving homeowners a reason to hit the pause button. 

Long-term mortgage rates came in at 4.54 percent with an average 0.5 point on Thursday, up from 3.92 percent a year ago. 

“The next few months will be key for gauging the health of the housing market,” Freddie Mac Chief Economist Sam Khater said in a release. “Existing sales appear to have peaked, sales of newly built homes are slowing and unsold inventory is rising for the first time in three years. Meanwhile, affordability pressures are increasingly a concern in many markets, as the combination of continuous price gains and higher mortgage rates appear to be giving more prospective buyers a pause.”

It's a little unclear if these factors are being felt in the DC region yet. In June, home prices in both the region and DC proper hit their highest level on record, but the number of pending home sales still came in above the 5- and 10-year averages. It will be interesting to see if the high prices and rising interest rates begin to affect the market in the months to come. 

See other articles related to: mortgage rates

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/rising-mortgage-rates-might-finally-be-giving-homebuyers-reason-to-ponder/14263.

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