
Since the mid 1990s, mortgage interest rates and home sales moved in opposite directions. Dodd-Frank made this inverse correlation even stronger. Back in February of 2013 when mortgage rates were near record lows, I wrote that future housing markets would be very interest-rate sensitive, despite assurances to the contrary from most macroeconomists. Last year I noted that fewer home sales or lower prices was sure to follow higher mortgage interest rates. Generally, volume precedes price, and as one would expect, the recent spike in mortgage rates is already hurting sales. The prevailing economic view is that the housing market would respond positively regardless of what happens with mortgage rates because house prices in the past have correlated poorly with mortgage…[READ MORE]