Soon they will start approving 40-50yr mortgages to pretend its affordable because “the monthly payment is only 60% of your income, totally affordable!”
I’ve been saying this for years.
It’s the high prices not the rate.
It’s time for the housing market to come to terms with this. pic.twitter.com/QlTT7uBDVR
— QE Infinity (@StealthQE4) October 27, 2025
Mortgage rates have remained stubbornly high: hovering at more than 6%, well above the sub-3% rates during the pandemic. That makes homeownership increasingly unaffordable for many Americans, as home prices have risen more than 50% since 2020.
During the pandemic, home buyers got accustomed to sub-3% mortgage rates, which made purchasing a house feel more achievable. But in the past couple of years, buyers have had no such luck.
In late 2023, mortgage rates peaked at 8%. They’ve let up some, today’s 30-year fixed mortgage rate is 6.19%, according to Mortgage News Daily, but economists and real-estate groups have warned they don’t see that figure budging much in the near future. And to make matters worse, some have said the mortgage rate it would take to make homes feel affordable again isn’t achievable.
This summer, Zillow economic analyst Anushna Prakash reported mortgage rates would need to drop to 4.43% for a typical home to be affordable to an average buyer. But “that kind of a rate decline is currently unrealistic,” Prakash wrote. Meanwhile, not even a 0% interest rate would make a typical home affordable in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, San Diego, or San Jose, she added.
https://fortune.com/2025/10/27/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-zillow-mortgage-rates-america-housing-affordability/
h/t Hot_Ambition_6457