May 27 (Reuters) – The rate on the most popular U.S. home loan rose to a nine-month high last week, as the \u200cIran war kept oil prices elevated, fueling inflation concerns and pushing \u200cbenchmark U.S. Treasury yields higher.<\/p>\n
The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose 9 basis points to 6.65% \u200bin the week ended May 22, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Wednesday. It was last higher in August 2025, before the Federal Reserve began a series of interest rate cuts to head off further labor market weakening.<\/p>\n
The U.S. labor \u200cmarket has since stabilized, with \u2060the unemployment rate now at the same 4.3% it was last August.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile inflation has picked up, with consumer prices \u2060rising 3.8% in April from a year earlier compared with 2.9% in August. Worried that the increase is not just due to a temporary rise in \u200benergy prices \u200bbut could be more persistent, a \u200bgrowing number of Fed policymakers \u200csay they may need to consider raising the interest rate.<\/p>\n
Mortgage applications dropped 8.5% from a week earlier, the MBA said, driven largely by a decline in refinancing.<\/p>\n
The latest rise in mortgage rates came as Kevin Warsh took over as the Federal Reserve’s new chair, succeeding Jerome Powell, whom President Donald \u200cTrump had criticized tirelessly for keeping interest \u200brates too high. Hours after Warsh was sworn \u200bin at a White House \u200bceremony, Trump said he expected rates to come down.<\/p>\n
In \u200ccontrast, financial markets are now pricing \u200bin the possibility of \u200ba Fed rate hike by year’s end.<\/p>\n
Mortgage rates are loosely tied to the Fed’s short-term policy rate, though they follow the 10-year \u200bTreasury yield much more \u200cclosely.<\/p>\n
Yields on U.S. government bonds have fallen this week on hopes \u200bof a breakthrough deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bAnn Saphir; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"May 27 (Reuters) – The rate on the most popular U.S. home loan rose to a nine-month high…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":825456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,79,296960,1597,19549,75621,59910,14606,11411,5005,141465,2179,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-825455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-fed-rate-hike","tag-federal-reserve","tag-interest-rate","tag-kevin-warsh","tag-mortgage-bankers-association","tag-mortgage-rates","tag-oil-prices","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-u-s-treasury","tag-unemployment-rate","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116646449237833865","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/825456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}