Last Week's Mortgage Rate Recap: Rates moved higher 👎
Mortgage rates continued to rise last week and hit the highest levels of the year, without any signs of a weakening economy or a softening jobs market. Talk of a recession, which would have helped bring mortgage rates back down, has all but disappeared and has been replaced with talk of a soft landing... the term used for seeing cooling inflation while maintaining a strong labor market and economy.
This Week's Mortgage Rate Forecast: Rates could get worse 👎
The outlook right now is that rates could continue higher, and may not see improvement without some help from next month's labor and inflation reports. Rates already starting this week out higher than last week, as bond yields rise and mortgage bonds lose ground.
What's affecting rates this week:
- The Fed: Mortgage rates will not move much lower until expectations for future Fed rate cuts start to grow. Instead of cuts though, we could see markets price in another Fed rate hike before the end of the year, which would pressure mortgage rates even higher.
- Jackson Hole Symposium: Fed Chair Powell will speak about the outlook of the economy on Friday morning, and we could see mortgage rates affected by his speech.