Mortgage rates keep capital restrictive

Mortgage rates were still above 6% on Wednesday, April 29, keeping home financing expensive even as national house prices flattened. (fortune.com) (mortgagenewsdaily.com) (fhfa.gov) Fortune’s daily survey put the average 30-year conventional mortgage at 6.259% on April 29, up about 1 basis point from the prior day. Mortgage News Daily’s lender-based index showed a 30-year fixed rate of 6.38% on April 28, up from 6.32% a week earlier. (fortune.com) (mortgagenewsdaily.com) The Federal Housing Finance Agency said Tuesday that U.S. house prices were unchanged in February on a seasonally adjusted basis. Year over year, prices were up 1.7%, and January’s monthly gain was revised up to 0.2%. (fhfa.gov) That combination leaves buyers facing a double bind: monthly payments are still high, and price relief is limited rather than broad. The FHFA said monthly price changes across census divisions ranged from a 1.1% drop in the Mountain division to a 0.6% increase in the South Atlantic. (fhfa.gov) The mortgage market is moving, but not enough to reset affordability quickly. Freddie Mac’s weekly 30-year fixed rate was 6.23% on April 23, down from 6.83% a year earlier, yet still well above the sub-4% era many owners locked in earlier this decade. (mortgagenewsdaily.com) Home-price data also arrives with a lag, which can make the market feel softer in real time than national indexes first suggest. S&P’s Case-Shiller series is released monthly with a two-month lag and is built as a three-month moving average of single-family home prices. (spglobal.com 1) (spglobal.com 2) For borrowers and property owners, that means deal math still depends more on rate locks, seller concessions, buydowns, and underwriting than on a sudden drop in borrowing costs. April’s data showed financing is easing only gradually. (mortgagenewsdaily.com) (fhfa.gov)