Rising rates mean homeowners' mortgage payments are spiking, according to new data from CoreLogic
Homeowners’ typical mortgage payment is rising much faster than home prices, according to new data from CoreLogic.
The US median sale price has risen by just under 6% over the past year, according to CoreLogic. However, the principal-and-interest mortgage payment on a median-priced home has spiked by nearly 15 percent. And the trend looks set to continue – CoreLogic’s Home Price Index Forecast predicts that home prices will rise 4.7% year over year in August 2019. Mortgage payments, meanwhile, are forecast to have risen more than 11% in the same time period.
One way to measure the impact of inflation, mortgage rates and home prices on affordability is to use the so-called “typical mortgage rate,” CoreLogic said. That’s a mortgage-rate-adjusted monthly payment based on each month’s median US home sale price, calculated using Freddie Mac’s average rate on a 30-year mortgage with a 20% down payment.
“The typical mortgage payment is a good proxy for affordability because it shows the monthly amount that a borrower would have to qualify for to get a mortgage to buy the median-priced US home,” said CoreLogic analyst Andrew LePage.
While the US median sale price in August was up about 5.7% year over year, the typical mortgage payment was up 14.5% because of a neatly 0.7-percentage-point hike in mortgage rates over the time period, LePage said.
