The Federal Reserve held its key interest rate steady for the fourth time this year on Wednesday, leaving its benchmark lending rate unchanged at a range of 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent. For homebuyers, this means that mortgage rates are likely to keep hovering around the 7-percent mark for the foreseeable future.
Why the Fed Again Decided Not To Cut Rates
A majority of experts were expecting the Federal Reserve to leave its key interest rate unchanged on Wednesday, as the central bank had repeatedly voiced its concerns over the potential impact of White House tariffs on the U.S. economy.
While the latest inflation and jobs market reports showed that any disruption caused by tariffs has so far been minor, the Fed is clearly being careful about what could happen in the coming weeks and months.
The Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, said during a news conference that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs are likely to bring inflation back up in the coming months, while growth will slow down and unemployment climb.
“Increases in tariffs this year are likely to push up prices and weigh on economic activity,” Powell said. “This is something we know is coming, we just don’t know the size of it.”
What It Means for the Housing Market
While the Fed does not directly set mortgage rates, it influences them through its monetary policies as they generally move in tandem with the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds. This means that the Fed’s decisions on rates have an impact on the mortgage market.
In this case, mortgage rates are likely to remain “more or less where they are,” Melissa Cohn, regional vice president of William Raveis Mortgage and a 43-year mortgage industry veteran, told Newsweek in a statement. “At least for now,” she added.
As of June 18, the national average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.81 percent, according to Freddie Mac, down 0.03 percent from a week earlier and 0.06 from a year earlier. While slightly lower than last year, mortgage rates remain nearly three times higher than they were during their pandemic lows, when they spurred a homebuying frenzy across the country.
High mortgage rates, together with sky-high prices and other rising costs like home insurance premiums, have made it hard for many Americans to buy a home. In May, sales across the U.S. were down by 5.9 percent while inventory was up 13 percent, according to Redfin. The median sale price of a home was $441,738, up 1 percent year-over-year.
But while still high, mortgage rates have somehow stabilized, and homebuyers and sellers have gotten used to them. This could be good for the housing market, which is currently in a bit of a slump.
“Following a subdued spring, steady mortgage rates and improving buyer sentiment may set the stage for a bustling summer housing market,” Realtor.com senior economic research analyst, Hannah Jones, said in a statement shared with Newsweek.
“While home prices remain elevated, market conditions are gradually tilting in favor of buyers, thanks to rising inventory, longer time-on-market, and climbing price reductions,” she said.
“However, this shift is far from uniform across the country. In many Northeast and Midwest metros, limited supply and sustained buyer demand continue to create tight, competitive conditions, while many Southern metros see inventory levels far surpassing pre-pandemic norms, and falling home prices.”
Will the Fed Cut Rates Later This Year?
Even as they expect tariffs to bring up inflation, the Fed still signaled that it would cut interest rates twice this year. Powell, however, said that the central bank is “well positioned to wait” before making a decision.
“The U.S. economy has defied all kinds of forecasts for it to weaken, really over the last three years, and it’s been remarkable to see…again and again when people think it’s going to weaken out. Eventually it will, but we don’t see signs of that now,” Powell said.
“Ultimately, Chair Powell said the Fed has to be humble about its ability to forecast how tariffs will play out and officials have to wait to see how the economic data actually evolves,” Chen Zhao, head of economics research at Redfin, said in a recent press release.
“He also offered that no one on the committee has very high conviction about their individual projection. This means that until the Fed feels confident that enough time has passed for the economic data to reflect the inflationary impact of tariffs, they will keep rates unchanged.”
According to Cohn, it is nearly impossible to make predictions about what the Fed will do in the coming months.
“Anyone who’s going to make a prediction with any sort of certainty is a fool,” she said. “We are fully loaded with uncertainty. We’re uncertain about what’s going to happen in the Middle East. We’re uncertain about what’s going on in Ukraine and Russia. We’re uncertain about what’s going to happen in Gaza. We’re uncertain about the tariffs. We’re uncertain about the budget.”
The bond market has been reacting, with yields up earlier this week due to higher oil prices, only to fall again when the weaker retail sales data came out on Tuesday—which shows that consumers are concerned, Cohn said.
“There is no reason to believe mortgage rates will fall in the near to medium term,” Zhao said. “While mortgage rates are not entirely determined by the Fed Funds rates, they cannot fall much while the Fed remains on hold.”
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