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Mortgages & Housing
The average 30-year mortgage rate has spiked to 6.86%, according to Bankrate.com.
The Homebuyer Affordability Fixed Mortgage Index was created by the National Association of Realtors and tracks the affordability of housing, typically based on a mix of median home prices, median income, and mortgage rates.
A value of 100 means that a family with the median income has exactly enough income to qualify for a mortgage on a median-priced home. This number bottomed during the Great Financial Crisis on July 31, 2006, at 100.4.
The last data released was on July 31, 2022, but if we use the historical correlation between the two data points, our estimate for September 30, 2022, would be 85. This would mark the first time that, according to this index, a family with the median income cannot qualify for a mortgage of a median price home.
Source: Helios Quantitative Research, Bloomberg, Bankrate.com