reached its highest level<\/a> since October 2023. On Thursday, bond yields dipped slightly.\n <\/p>\n\n Bond yields help set interest rates across the economy, so a steep rise in yields may not only push up the cost of mortgages, but also auto loans and other borrowing.\n <\/p>\n
\n Many economists had expected mortgage rates to fall this year and, for a time, they were headed in that direction. But the start of the war with Iran in February upended that trajectory, as a spike in oil prices raised fears that inflation could flare up again, said Chen Zhao, an economist at Redfin.\n <\/p>\n
\n Redfin expects mortgage rates to stay in the upper- and mid-6% range for the rest of the year, Zhao added.\n <\/p>\n
\n Those elevated mortgage rates have weighed down the housing market, leading to fewer homes changing hands.\n <\/p>\n
\n Pending home sales fell in July to their weakest level since the start of the year, according to the latest data released by the National Association of Realtors.\n <\/p>\n
\n The rate increase is also putting refinancing out of reach for homeowners who had hoped to take advantage of lower borrowing costs.\n <\/p>\n
\n Refinance applications picked up earlier this year when the 30-year mortgage rate briefly dipped below 6%, before the Iran war sent rates higher, said Jeffrey Ruben, president of home lending at WSFS Bank. Now, with mortgage rates marching toward 7%, refinance activity has cooled again, he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201c[Refinance activity] even more so than home purchases is clearly impacted by interest rates,\u201d Ruben said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The global sell-off in the bond market is hitting the housing market, with US mortgage rates surging to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":882128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":["post-882127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/882128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}