November Mortgage Rates Forecast: Hitting a Plateau (We Hope)

This article was first published on NerdWallet.com.

November mortgage rates forecast

To understand the mortgage rate forecast for November, you first should know what happened in October: Rates behaved abominably. The rate on a 30-year fixed-rate loan rose above 8% for many borrowers. The last time rates were this high, *NSYNC topped the charts (August 2000, "It's Gonna Be Me"). Some of today's mortgage applicants were in grade school!

When mortgage rates cross a 23-year-old threshold, it makes you wonder if they'll keep rising. They might. But the more likely scenario is that they’ll plateau for much of November, although they could succumb to upward pressure after Thanksgiving.

Inflation and the Fed

The Federal Reserve set the stage for a more tranquil November when it kept short-term interest rates unchanged at the end of its Oct. 31-Nov. 1 meeting. That decision was virtually foretold on Oct. 19, when Fed Chair Jerome Powell gave a speech in which he said, "Inflation readings...