:"91.8 percent of homeowners with mortgages have a rate below 6 percent, 82.4 percent have a rate below 5 percent, 62 percent enjoy a rate below 4 percent, and 23.5 percent boast a rate below 3 percent.", 82% of homeowners feel locked into their current homes due to low mortgage rates while adding that a 5.5% mortgage could be the key to unlocking their doors.
We simply need, not only to build more new homes — a boomlet is already underway — but also need to unlock the supply existing homes that emerging retirees, among others, would otherwise sell, either to trade down, or trade up, depending on where they are in their respective life cycles. It's clear that the days of 2-4% mortgages are over, as the Fed is unlikely to cut interest rates down to zero anytime soon. However, the Fed could do a lot to unlock the supply of homes by cutting official rates down to 4% which would reduce housing costs considerably and also exert downward pressure on measured housing inflation despite concerns to the contrary.
There are enough foreign sellers of U.S. Treasurys that upward pressure on rates is not coming from just a single source like the Fed.