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Mortgage Rates Hit 6.92%, the Highest in 20 Years

About a year ago, I noticed a couple hundred acres being cleared and a sign announcing "Coming Soon - New Homes from the high 300s." By the time the first house was finished in July, that sign was gone and replaced with something to the effect of, "Family Homes for Rent." I have to believe interest rates dove this.

I've seen two house in my neighborhood up for sale in the past few months. Both were pulled from the market after 60-90 days. It's now a buyers market...if you can afford to pay back more than double the original loan.

What might have happened is that around that time a year ago, that mega corporation Blackrock along with a few others were going around figuring out what to do with all the free money they were being given by the boatload so they were buying up entire subdivisions before they were even built to turn into rentals and buying up anything in good areas for way over ask to turn into rental properties

It happened here, a bunch of developments were snatched up and it totally messed up my taxes as that company was going around paying 20% to 30% premium to snatch up the houses.

The sudden hike in interest rates has put a halt on that thankfully.
 
Yup. New home buyers are almost back where I was in the late 1970's, early '80's with +7% mortgage rates and 20% down. What a fuck job for young folks getting started.

VooDoo
It would appear that they do not want young people to buy homes.
"You will own nothing, and be happy" comes to mind.
 
Yup. New home buyers are almost back where I was in the late 1970's, early '80's with +7% mortgage rates and 20% down. What a fuck job for young folks getting started.

VooDoo

Actually I think that was the best time to be a young person trying to buy into a house.
The high interest rates and needing to have a decent down, kept the flippers away and the high interest rates kept the corporations away.

I bought my house over 20 years ago when it was 7% interest rate on the mortgage and you had to have 20% down and the house could be no more than 3x your annual salary. You know what, it was great! It was affordable. The monthly mortgage payments were $600

Super low interest rates and sky high prices are what killed the dream of owning a home for the working class.

A $100k home at 7% interest is a whole lot more affordable for a working stiff, than the same home but now for $360k with a 2% interest rate.
 
The folks who are really going to get killed are the ARM folks…. If you didn’t refinance to fixed rate… good luck!

Yeah, well, if those folks doesn't already re-fi when rates were sitting before 2%, then they're probably too stupid to own a house.

I bought a modest house and made short-term sacrifices to pay it off, so pardon me if I've got approximately zero tolerance for those who made poor decisions and are now experiencing the end of this party. And fuck the banks that let it happen again, and doubly fuck the Fed for blowing another bubble instead of letting the problems work out naturally.
 
I'd rather pay 20% more for a home at 3% than buy the same home at 7%.

The folks that bought at inflated prices over the last few years still got a great deal overall if they financed. They just need to stay put.

The real losers here are our children. We're robbing them blind. Generationally speaking, we deserve to live out the twilight of our lives in the shittiest of nursing homes. Shame on us.

You have it a bit backwards, it's not "us" robbing the next generation, it's the greedy corporations and bankers.
Free / near free money is what drove housing prices to insane levels.

The government robbed the careful savers of their savings to hand out free money to the wall street fat cats so they could live like billionaires no matter how horribly they did their jobs.

The working class paid for all that and more by having their way of life destroyed.

A huge part of the increase in house prices was big corporations taking all that free money and buying up houses and then putting them back up for sale at huge premiums. It happened here all over.
 
I’m feeling no empathy. Any intelligent person saw this coming for years. The mandates and associated government funding ensured this outcome. Because the drones were too comfortable and obsessed with “security”, their acquiescence allowed this. They lit this candle; we all might as well put the pedal to the metal.
 
The folks who are really going to get killed are the ARM folks…. If you didn’t refinance to fixed rate… good luck!

At least in America you can usually still take out a 30 year fixed rate house loan.

The poor folks in places like Australia, Canada, England and many other places simply don't have that option at all and all they have is 30 year ARM mortgages where the interest rate resets every 5 years or so.

But at least the government in England has a plan to "help" the working class.... let the mortgages be extended to 50 or 75 years and the debt passed on from the parents to the children... Yep nothing like ensuring the bankers record profits on the backs of future generations...
 
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The other shock will be when McD's is starting off kid's at $30 / hour.............
But kids won't work there.
It will be staffed by senior citizens who cannot survive on their Social Security checks that are based upon income levels and how much they put into the system. They worked their entire lives making virtually pennies on the dollar, and are now trying to survive at well below poverty level. Hood rats who've never held a job fair better than people who worked every day their entire lives.
 
Maybe your asking price is stupid high if the best offer you got was 50%. It's not worth an arbitrary value, it's worth what someone will pay.


Why retire? Work until you're dead, it's the way of the future!
Because even my realtor said...uhh, this guy is nuts.
 
But kids won't work there.
It will be staffed by senior citizens who cannot survive on their Social Security checks that are based upon income levels and how much they put into the system. They worked their entire lives making virtually pennies on the dollar, and are now trying to survive at well below poverty level. Hood rats who've never held a job fair better than people who worked every day their entire lives.

But it was all worth it so the bankers and the corporate CEOs and the big investment fund bosses could get that coveted billionaires club...

As always, the government ensures the rich get richer of the backs of the poor and that the poor have to pay for their own bad decisions as well as the bad decisions of the rich, while the rich get insulated from ever having to get a bit poorer.
 
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But kids won't work there.
It will be staffed by senior citizens who cannot survive on their Social Security checks that are based upon income levels and how much they put into the system. They worked their entire lives making virtually pennies on the dollar, and are now trying to survive at well below poverty level. Hood rats who've never held a job fair better than people who worked every day their entire lives.
Those that will qualify at, or below, the "Poverty Level" will make out much better than those senior citizens working at McD's... I'm sure those working the Government system will gross more than the working poor.

No one available to fill all those job openings.
 
But kids won't work there.
It will be staffed by senior citizens who cannot survive on their Social Security checks that are based upon income levels and how much they put into the system. They worked their entire lives making virtually pennies on the dollar, and are now trying to survive at well below poverty level. Hood rats who've never held a job fair better than people who worked every day their entire lives.
Robots… it will be staffed by robots.
 
You have it a bit backwards, it's not "us" robbing the next generation, it's the greedy corporations and bankers.
Free / near free money is what drove housing prices to insane levels.

The government robbed the careful savers of their savings to hand out free money to the wall street fat cats so they could live like billionaires no matter how horribly they did their jobs.

The working class paid for all that and more by having their way of life destroyed.

A huge part of the increase in house prices was big corporations taking all that free money and buying up houses and then putting them back up for sale at huge premiums. It happened here all over.
That's why I said "generally speaking."

It's too easy to blame the government for all the problems we're experiencing. We elected those individuals, or at the very least allowed them to assume authority while we sat with our tail between our legs (depending on your perspective.) We complain about stimulus programs, yet are quick to cash those checks and exploit these programs to our benefit on the grounds that we'll be paying for them with our future tax dollars. We're not though. The debt we've accumulated will take generations to pay down, if it's ever even settled.

At some point we need to accept some degree of responsibility for the problems at hand and do everything within our power to rectify those problems. Especially when the policies and programs implemented negatively affect our children. We suck. Again, generationally speaking. History will not look back on us admirably.
 
During the artificial low interest rate years recently, it was common the get "no doc. loans" and I was told by my lender clients Appraisal Waivers were very common. Get ready for a new wave of over extended borrowers and foreclosure meltdowns. History has this way of repeating itself.
 
During the artificial low interest rate years recently, it was common the get "no doc. loans" and I was told by my lender clients Appraisal Waivers were very common. Get ready for a new wave of over extended borrowers and foreclosure meltdowns. History has this way of repeating itself.

You are right and I can't wait. There isn't enough investor to buy all the houses that will go into foreclosure. But I'll buy my share if there's any money left in the markets.....
 
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During the artificial low interest rate years recently, it was common the get "no doc. loans" and I was told by my lender clients Appraisal Waivers were very common. Get ready for a new wave of over extended borrowers and foreclosure meltdowns. History has this way of repeating itself.
Stay liquid and capitalize.

Fortunes are made and lost in times like these. I'm not nearly as nervous as I am excited. Opportunities abound if you look for them and hard times make hard men. God knows we need more of those.

The glass is half full.....
 
The debt we've accumulated will take generations to pay down, if it's ever even settled.

It is statistically impossible for the debt to ever be paid back.
Everybody knows it and so essentially it will keep going until it hits the wall and there is a massive collapse.

Then the poor and working class and upper middle class will have everything taken away from them by force and handed to the mega rich and bankers because of course those folks must "be made whole" and everybody else will get a chance to work for slave wages to try to earn the rent on a fraction of what they used to own.

It's not just here, it's the entire world.

That's why (as much as I can already hear the screaming and arguing), the whole interest idea is evil from the get go.
There is actually no way to have it paid back once it get started, so it always keeps building then goes to a huge bust everybody (except the super elites), lose everything and everybody gets to start out broke again.

When it happens this time, I wouldn't be surprised if the "just following orders" types come to take what you have at gunpoint even if you own it outright because well, the government must make the bankers and the super rich whole. Just like the EU did to Greece, Cyprus, Ireland and others. Oh you thought that was your money in the bank... sorry it belongs to the global bankers now.
 
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Stay liquid and capitalize.

Fortunes are made and lost in times like these. I'm not nearly as nervous as I am excited. Opportunities abound if you look for them and hard times make hard men. God knows we need more of those.

The glass is half full.....
It's a great time to buy fine English Shotguns, I'll tell ya that!

Sirhr
 
Maybe I'm the only one, but I think in the big picture having normal rates is a good thing. Sure,many people will get hurt in the shorter term, so not ignoring that, but overall economy wise having basically "free money" at extremely low rates has created a number of other more substantial problems.

My view is the underlying economic structure is very broken and the powers that be have tried everything from bandaids to duct tape to fix it and none of those things work.

Specifically I am referring to the trend of the mid to late 90's on up of 'outsourcing' and 'globalization'. None of that stuff works the way it was sold as working. Instead of causing pain to the right people and fixing the problem they don't want to rock the boat and have tried to rely on low rates for a long term fix. It's sort of like an alcoholic that doesn't want to admit that he has a problem. Admitting that there is a problem would mean things would change, but none of the powers that be want to challenge the now status quo.
 
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Maybe I'm the only one, but I think in the big picture having normal rates is a good thing. Sure,many people will get hurt in the shorter term, so not ignoring that, but overall economy wise having basically "free money" at extremely low rates has created a number of other more substantial problems.

My view is the underlying economic structure is very broken and the powers that be have tried everything from bandaids to duct tape to fix it and none of those things work.

Specifically I am referring to the trend of the mid to late 90's on up of 'outsourcing' and 'globalization'. None of that stuff works the way it was sold as working. Instead of causing pain to the right people and fixing the problem they don't want to rock the boat and have tried to rely on low rates for a long term fix. It's sort of like an alcoholic that doesn't want to admit that he has a problem. Admitting that there is a problem would mean things would change, but none of the powers that be want to challenge the now status quo.
The "Powers that be" are making a financial killing (them, their children and their cronies) so there is no incentive for them to implement any change.
 
What might have happened is that around that time a year ago, that mega corporation Blackrock along with a few others were going around figuring out what to do with all the free money they were being given by the boatload so they were buying up entire subdivisions before they were even built to turn into rentals and buying up anything in good areas for way over ask to turn into rental properties

It happened here, a bunch of developments were snatched up and it totally messed up my taxes as that company was going around paying 20% to 30% premium to snatch up the houses.

The sudden hike in interest rates has put a halt on that thankfully.

Could very well be the case. For a while I was getting several calls each week wanting to buy both of my houses. I just starting telling them my price was three times what ever Zillow had listed.
 
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Stay liquid and capitalize.

Fortunes are made and lost in times like these. I'm not nearly as nervous as I am excited. Opportunities abound if you look for them and hard times make hard men. God knows we need more of those.

The glass is half full.....
I was thinking this as I was reading the thread. I'm glad you posted it. I am probably one of the younger ones in this thread. I'm 34. I was raised poor and with a lot of hard work and a lot of luck have made a good living for myself. I built a house 3 years ago for 60 cents on the dollar (pre covid pricing) by doing most of the work myself. I think that is what we are going to see in the future, not borrowing money to pay someone else to do all the hard work. I am seeing my friends getting hammered right now, but they should be. Most of them have jobs that don't bring any real value to society. They shouldn't have 5,000 sq ft homes just because they know how to make a spreadsheet.

We need some hard times in our society. Easy times are what brought on socialism and the "woke" movement. If people were busy working and trying to feed their families in a garden, they wouldn't have time to think about what gender they are.

I spent a lot of time around my grandpa growing up and he grew up during the depression. I can't tell you how many nails I have taken out of wood and straightened to be used again. The country needs more of this and is the only way we will have a future as a country. If things continue to go as well financially as they have during my lifetime, our society as a whole won't be worth living in.

Sorry for the long rant.
 
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Could very well be the case. For a while I was getting several calls each week wanting to buy both of my houses. I just starting telling them my price was three times what ever Zillow had listed.

We've been getting mail on a regular basis over the past few years offering to buy a house that my dad occupied. Well, he passed away on Labor Day, my wife and I got the place cleaned out, and then we started calling those places back a few weeks ago. Absolutely no interest whatsoever. Apparently, the business model that works at 2% doesn't work at 7%. I'm shocked.
 
I know more than a few people that have made some really dumb decisions refinancing houses in the last couple years. 1 guy in particular, refi'd to take out 160k in cash, every penny of equity he had, and has blown nearly all of it on dumb shit; car, vacations, you name it. Another took out about 100k, spent 70k on a pool and basically blew the rest, this is on a house worth about 400k.

I think a lot of people entered this downturn with WAY less equity in their homes than you would expect them to have after the last few years of crazy value growth.
 
The "Powers that be" are making a financial killing (them, their children and their cronies) so there is no incentive for them to implement any change.
What actually happened (or is happening I should say) is that through outright corruption the government created a system tailor made for specific industries. So those who benefited have been given all sorts of preferential treatment.

And when they started rolling in the dough they then funnelled money right back to the politicians that in many cases set up the sweetheart deals from the get go. It becomes a self licking Loli pop.

Nobody makes $10 or $20 or $200 billion dollars without a lot of grease being passed around.
 
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It is indeed, because excessively low rates causes market distortion and inefficiently deploys capital.
People look at the stock market and they wonder "why" so many things happen. For example we average something like $750 to $800 billion dollars per year in share buybacks. Just in the past 5 years it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 TRILLION dollars, just in buybacks alone.

If I can borrow money for nothing, and then do that, my share prices go up to astronomical amounts vs the actual underlying performance of the company.

The stock market is insanely full of inflation. So while really not doing that much better fundamentally now vs 5 years ago, but the share price has gone up 200%. Yes each slice of the pie is bigger than before, but if you look at it from a total valuation standpoint a corporation that has a billion dollars in revenue today is valued total at 2-3x what the same corporation was valued at 5 years ago with $900 million in revenue. In short they grew revenue by $100 million bucks over a set period of time but during that same time the total valuation has doubled.

It's insanity.
 
People look at the stock market and they wonder "why" so many things happen. For example we average something like $750 to $800 billion dollars per year in share buybacks. Just in the past 5 years it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 TRILLION dollars, just in buybacks alone.

If I can borrow money for nothing, and then do that, my share prices go up to astronomical amounts vs the actual underlying performance of the company.

The stock market is insanely full of inflation. So while really not doing that much better fundamentally now vs 5 years ago, but the share price has gone up 200%. Yes each slice of the pie is bigger than before, but if you look at it from a total valuation standpoint a corporation that has a billion dollars in revenue today is valued total at 2-3x what the same corporation was valued at 5 years ago with $900 million in revenue. In short they grew revenue by $100 million bucks over a set period of time but during that same time the total valuation has doubled.

It's insanity.
You are not wrong. However, Part of the increase in top line revenue can be explained through monetary and price inflation. Should it translate into valuation? Doubtful.
 
Closed on my first house back in late March this year. Got 2.97% rate.

I refused to purchase a house while I was active duty and the. Have to worry about either renting or selling a house every 3-4 years.

However I am glad I got it before all this BS started.

0 down and actually got back almost 2k at closing due to different veteran programs I qualified for.

Doc
 
Bought our place in TN this year and got a 7/1 ARM for 3.5%

Not ideal. But the 15 and 30 year fixed were already in the 5’s at that point.

Figure i have 7 years to figure out where this shit show of an economy is headed and have a few hundred K of equity liquid from our last two houses sold from 2017-2022.

Waiting for the buying oppty of a lifetime with what we’ve kept liquid but that ARM has me nervous for the long-term.
 
1665846269888.png
 
When interest rates hit 18% that 6.6% mortgage will look really good!
My first rate 2005 was 6.5%. Thought I would be good if I could ever get it to 5.5 or just under. I’m sub 3% now.

Kids CDs I bought paid close to 7% on three years.

ING account I had my home improvement loan on was paying 5% and every month there was interest I used to upgrade some fixtures in the house.

There are some benefits to interest rates rising……

Of course that is only if you have confidence in the financial system and have an idea they are trying to keep it viable.
 
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You are not wrong. However, Part of the increase in top line revenue can be explained through monetary and price inflation. Should it translate into valuation? Doubtful.

Worse yet, the market rewarded this inflated revenue with ever-increasing PE ratios, because why not? Money was cheap, so valuation becomes an abstract concept.

Finding actual, sustainable valuations is going to be a brutal process - especially when overshoot occurs and monkey-hammers owners at a real inconvenient time.
 
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I am sitting back and enjoying the meltdown...where there is misery due to foolish spending...there is opportunity for sound investments...

Yep, and I've got a shopping list. There should be some deals to be had while everyone else is worried about being $250k upside down on their house and $40k on their new truck. I was way too conservative in 2009-'10, and do not intend to repeat that mistake.
 
Yes, in 1983 I had a co-worker buy a house and he paid 18%. I can't remember all of the details, but I believe the rates jumped big time after he sold his house but before he was able to find a house he wanted to buy.

My first house I paid 12.5% interest.

Yeap the good ole days of Jimmy Carter 1970s economy. Let's get inflation under control by cranking interest rates through the roof. Shit lasted for years after he was gone.
 
wait till it doubles and the government is showing up at what was your door to take it over and give it to an illegal free of charge . It's coming
 
My parent bought this house in 1969 for about $25k. Modest sized house on a very busy road, interest rate was probably closer to 10%. Sold it in 1979 for $57k. The 10% rate in 69 on a 25k home didn't make home buying impossible but when the house costs over 80x more, the interest is going to sting.


RonA
 
Yeah, I'm an airline pilot at one of the majors and my wife is a nursing professor. I just made Captain. I've got a .mil retirement. I've live in a decent but somewhat modest house for the last 12 years, that I bought while still in the .mil. We were trying to find a place this spring/summer close to my base with a bit of land (5-10 acres or so), but don't HAVE to move, as I can commute. I budgeted out more than I wanted to spend, but could still afford and was getting outbid by $30-40k or more! We make good money, so who the hell are these people?! I'll be staying put for a while, and hopefully pick up a place for substantially less when this bubble burst--that is, if any of us have a job after this cluster.
 

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im-643093


Mortgage rates on a 30-year fixed loan are at the highest levels in 20 years.​

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

The rate on a popular type of home loan increased this week to its highest level in 20 years, according to data released Thursday.


The average rate on a 30-year fixed loan increased to 6.92% as of Thursday, according to the results of Freddie Mac’s weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey—the highest such rate since April 2002.


Mortgage rates have more than doubled this year as the Federal Reserve has moved to combat inflation. “We continue to see a tale of two economies in the data,” Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist, said in a statement. “Strong job and wage growth are keeping consumers’ balance sheets positive, while lingering inflation, recession fears and housing affordability are driving housing demand down precipitously.”

Prospective buyers have pulled back in recent months as high mortgage rates have weighed on home loan demand. The volume of applications for a loan to purchase a home last week—a leading indicator of buyer demand—was 39% lower than the same week last year, the Mortgage Bankers Association said earlier this week.

Recent inflation news has the potential to keep rates high. Inflation measured by the Consumer Price Index in September was hotter than expected, according to data released Thursday. The 10-year Treasury yield, with which mortgage rates often move, gained following the CPI release.
OP posted this 2 months ago. Something from an article this weekend:
Mortgage rates for a 30-year fixed rate loan are now hovering above 7%, more than 4 percentage points higher than a year ago. That has slashed a typical buyer’s purchasing power by 14%, according to Black Knight, a mortgage data company.

Welcome to "the new Norm"...
1668391323563.png

For many young people in need of a house... There could never be a better time than the next few months.
Prove me wrong.

 
Yeah, I'm an airline pilot at one of the majors and my wife is a nursing professor. I just made Captain. I've got a .mil retirement. I've live in a decent but somewhat modest house for the last 12 years, that I bought while still in the .mil. We were trying to find a place this spring/summer close to my base with a bit of land (5-10 acres or so), but don't HAVE to move, as I can commute. I budgeted out more than I wanted to spend, but could still afford and was getting outbid by $30-40k or more! We make good money, so who the hell are these people?! I'll be staying put for a while, and hopefully pick up a place for substantially less when this bubble burst--that is, if any of us have a job after this cluster.
There are no factors contributing to making the "bubble burst"... Blackstone is collecting single family residences.
 
money is still historically cheap
look for a mkt rally once inflation data cools and play it then sell the fk out of it!
 
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Take this news as "positive" if you will be buying a house in the next 12 months.
 
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