The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate declined for the sixth straight week, giving potential homebuyers some relief after rates topped out over 7% last month.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.27%, down from 6.31% last week, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac. A year ago, the 30-year FRM averaged 3.05%.
The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.69% up from last week when it averaged 5.54%. A year ago, the 15-year FRM averaged 2.30%.
“Heading into the holidays, mortgage rates continued to move down,” said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s Chief Economist. “Rates have declined significantly over the past six weeks, which is helpful for potential homebuyers, but new data indicates homeowners are hesitant to list their homes.”
“Many of those homeowners are carefully weighing their options as more than two-thirds of current homeowners have a fixed mortgage rate of below four percent,” Khater continued.
The housing market slump deepened in November as sales of previously occupied U.S. homes slowed for the tenth consecutive month — the longest such stretch on records going back to 1999.
Existing home sales fell 7.7% last month from October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.09 million, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday. That’s a slower sales pace than what economists had expected, according to FactSet.
Sales plunged 35.4% from November last year. Excluding the steep sales downturn that occurred in May 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, sales are now at the slowest annual pace since November 2010, when the housing market was mired in the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis of the late 2000s.
Still, home prices continued to rise last month, though at a far smaller rate than just a few months ago. The national median home sales price rose 3.5% in November from a year earlier, to $370,700.
The combination of higher mortgage rates and rising prices continue to keep many first-time buyers on the sidelines. They represented 28% of sales last month, unchanged from October, the NAR said. By historical standards, first-time buyers typically made up as much as 40% or more of transactions.
