Mortgage Rates Fall Despite Strong Inflation and Economic Data News

Mortgage rates fell this week, reaching their lowest level since the winter.

Despite generally strong headline June jobs figures, a booming stock market and broader signs that the economy continues to recover, investors are continuing to downwardly revise their very optimistic forecasts for economic growth that they made earlier in the year. This shift in sentiment is placing downward pressure on longer-term Treasury yields and the mortgage rates they influence. Longer-term Treasury yields -- an indicator of the market’s expectations for economic growth -- surged above pre-pandemic highs in March, but have since gradually retreated in part due to decreased expectations for the amount of monetary and fiscal stimulus that the market would receive.

Mortgage rates, which are generally influenced by these longer-term yields, have declined as a result -- a move that accelerated this week as investors ingested concerns about the Delta variant of COVID-19. All told, mortgage rates now sit near their lowest level since February, fully reversing the sharp upward movements from earlier in the year. While longer-term changes in rates are likely to be to the upside, the shift in the market’s outlook suggests that rates have little reason to move sharply higher anytime soon.

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