Last Week's Mortgage Rate Recap: Rates slightly worse 👎
Mortgage rates moved slightly higher with last week's CPI inflation data, mainly because the core numbers - inflation that excludes volatile food and energy prices - show that inflation is not improving much, despite the headline number showing the lowest annual rate of inflation in 2 years. Rates also didn't improve much after the Fed meeting, although the Fed did not raise its rate for the first time in 10 meetings, with markets now anticipating the Fed will hike again in July.
This Week's Mortgage Rate Forecast: Rates could worsen 👎
This week is a holiday shortened week with lots of housing data but little else in the way of data. Rates will likely react to comments made by many Fed members this week, but are not likely to see much in the way of improvement and could worsen a bit.
What's affecting rates this week:
- Economic data: Although this week has a lot of housing data, that doesn't affect mortgage rates much, and there isn't much other data to watch other than Thursday's jobless claims.
- Fed speakers: There will be members of the Fed speaking every day this week (except Monday), including Fed Chair Powell's biannual testimony to Congress, which could cause rates to move up or down a bit.