Mortgage rates are at a 21-year high. Here’s what that means for you.

“According to Freddie Mac, the rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has climbed to 7.09 percent, an uptick from the 5.13 percent it was at a year prior.
A mortgage rate is “the interest rate charged for a home loan,” and effectively the monthly cost of borrowing that money. As mortgage rates have gone up, monthly payments have gotten more and more pricey for people looking to purchase a home even if the base price of the house stays the same.

For example, under a 3.22 percent 30-year fixed mortgage rate in January 2022, the monthly payment on a $400,000 house in New York with a 20 percent down payment was $1,716, per a Bankrate calculator. Now, under a 7.09 percent mortgage rate in August 2023, the monthly payment on the same house with the same price would be $2,477.

Such costs have had an impact on the housing market: As mortgage rates have increased, some potential buyers have held off on purchasing houses, while sellers have similarly been less likely to list their property. For current homeowners, there’s a major incentive to wait until rates go down before deciding to re-enter the market and search for their next house.

“These higher mortgage costs are a tremendous barrier to entry for anyone wanting to enter the housing market,” Gregory Daco, the chief economist for Ernst & Young, tells Vox.”

“One of the biggest factors in the rise in mortgage rates is the Fed’s approach to monetary policy, which includes interest rate hikes aimed at combating inflation.”

YOU are a welfare queen. Middle Class Welfare. Mortgage Interest Deduction. : Sources

Policy Basics: Federal Tax Expenditures 11 18 2019. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/policy-basics-federal-tax-expenditures The biggest U.S. tax breaks Drew Desilver. 4 6 2016. Pew Research Center Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures for Fiscal Years 2019-2023. 12 18 2019. The Joint

Most Americans Get ‘Free Stuff’ From The Government

“virtually every American gets some kind of government subsidy, from people who have mortgages or employer-sponsored health care (big tax deductions) to those who work for or invest in big companies (big corporate tax subsidies). Recipients of Social Security and Medicare get back far more in benefits than they paid in taxes.
Benefits to people who are not poor often equal or dwarf the cost of those for the poor. The home mortgage interest deduction, which the Congressional Budget Office found largely benefits the top one-fifth of income earners, cost the federal government about $70 billion in 2013; food stamps cost the government $74 billion last year. The tax break for employers who provide health insurance cost Washington $250 billion in 2013.

Medicare, which is available to all seniors regardless of income level, is more expensive ($587 billion in 2013) than Medicaid ($449 billion), the health care program for the poor, and an average-income couple retiring this year will get back three times more in Medicare benefits than they paid in Medicare taxes.”

“Among the biggest recipients of government generosity are corporations, which receive a multitude of federal and state tax breaks and incentives. These subsidies, sometimes called “corporate welfare,” primarily benefit the shareholders and executives of the nation’s largest companies. As of last year, 96 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs were white, and white investors typically have three times as much money in the stock market as nonwhites. Investors are not direct recipients of corporate welfare, but the value of their holdings is shaped by any federal, state and local funds going to the publicly held corporations.”

Scrapping a subsidy to homeowners

“In the February issue of the American Economic Review, researchers Kamila Sommer and Paul Sullivan consider the implications for the US housing market if this $90 billion subsidy to homeowners were to be scrapped. They find that getting rid of it would actually improve overall welfare by lowering home prices and expanding opportunities for home ownership among younger and lower-income households.
“The people who are the primary beneficiaries of the deduction are the high-income households,” Sommer said in an interview with the AEA. “When you take it away, house prices fall, they consume less housing, live in smaller houses…but the decline in house prices reduces the entry cost for the marginal households that are previously renting. It’s almost like this reallocation of housing from high-income households to low-income households.”

Critics say the mortgage interest deduction is a regressive tax policy that inflates prices and encourages buyers to choose more expensive houses and take on debt rather than sinking money into other investments. It also robs the Treasury of tax revenue that could be used to close the deficit. But real estate lobbyists say its repeal would depress homeownership and negatively impact social welfare.”

“More than half of all existing homeowners — 58 percent — would see their consumption improve after the reform, with most of the benefits going to young, low-income households. Rich homeowners with big properties suffer the most, since they have outsized amounts of mortgage interest that can be deducted from their income tax burden. When that benefit goes away they end up bearing the brunt of the impact.

It’s less certain whether there would be any meaningful impact on tax revenue for the government, the authors say. Getting rid of the deduction leads to a 2.6 percent increase in income tax revenue, but the falling home prices translate to a 7.8 percent drop in property tax revenue. Overall, it’s essentially a wash, with a total revenue gain of just one-half of a percentage point.”