As mortgage rates top 7% — the highest they’ve been in 21 years according to Freddie Mac — home buyers face ballooning costs. Some housing experts are warning that rates could keep climbing toward 8%. What does this mean for house hunters? Even ever-optimistic real estate pros say buyers and sellers must adjust their expectations. “I don’t like to be ‘doom and gloom,’ this is my book of business,” said Bess Freedman, CEO of Brown Harris Stevens, a national real estate firm.
That, along with Fitch’s downgrade of US debt, have exerted upward pressure on longer term borrowing rates, Yun said. This week, the yield on 10-year US Treasuries crossed over the 4.2% threshold it had been bumping up against to 4.3% on Thursday, its highest level in over a decade. That’s a tipping point, according to Yun. “If it breaks past that, then the momentum, however irrational, could push it up toward 5%,” he wrote.