Mortgage Surge Toward 6% Slams Brakes on Red-Hot Housing Market
Homes sales are slipping as torrid price gains, and now costlier loans, push more US buyers to delay their searches.
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When mortgage broker Jeff Lazerson quoted a 6% rate for a client this week, he thought it was a mistake. The last time 30-year rates were that high was late 2008, when policymakers plunged the world into an era of ultra-low rates to pull economies back from the brink.
“What a shocker!’” said Lazerson, president of Mortgage Grader Inc. in Laguna Niguel, California. “My sense is we’ll see a very nasty recession.”