Mortgage Rates Today, Sep. 24, 2024: The Drift Continues

In brief

Mortgage rates might have had a momentous week following last Wednesday's Federal Reserve events. But they didn't.

True, we've seen more daily rises since then than we've grown used to. But that was to be expected: There was a big gap between the number of future cuts to general interest rates investors were hoping for and those the Fed penciled in.

With luck, those modest rises might fade and modest falls resume over the next 10 days or so. The next seriously important economic report is the September jobs report, and that isn't due until next Friday, Oct. 4.

Yes, there are a few other reports between now and then that could move mortgage rates, most notably this Friday's inflation report, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index.

But both markets and the Fed have largely switched their focus onto employment data. So, Thursday's GDP figures and Friday's price index would need to contain big surprises to make significant differences.

Looking ahead

At the time, the other important monthly forecast, the one from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), hadn't been published. And we promised to bring it to you when it landed. Well, it did, yesterday.

The MBA reckons those same rates will likely average 6.6% in the current quarter, falling to 6.2% next quarter. After that, it's expecting a further drop to 6.0% in the first quarter of 2025 (Q1/25), a couple of quarters at 5.9%, then another fall to 5.8% in Q4/25.

That averages out at 5.8% over the whole of 2025. But, significantly, the MBA is anticipating they'll hold at that same 5.8% through 2026.

This bears out what we've been saying for some months: Mortgage rates are likely to continue to decline through 2025 but at a glacial pace. We're yet to read an expert analysis that suggests they'll fall close to the pre-pandemic lows everyone once hoped were the new normal.

Well, not anytime soon, anyway. Never say never.

This is our moment to remind you of the limitations of all such predictions. As the late Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith once wrote, "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."

Still, we have to base our decisions on something. And careful and rational analysis by experts is the best we have to go on.

Coming up

Mortgage rates today and this week

Yesterday's economic data are unlikely to have caused mortgage rates' modest rise yesterday. But they may have moderated it.

One of S&P Global's purchasing managers' indexes came in precisely as forecast while the other, for the manufacturing sector, was worse than expected. That would normally have exerted some minor downward pressure on those rates.

MarketWatch lists only two economic reports today. The S&P Case-Shiller home price index rarely affects mortgage rates.

But the consumer confidence index sometimes does, though typically only a little. Markets are expecting it to improve a little, to 104 from 103.3. Anything over 104 might push mortgage rates a little higher while anything below might help those rates.

Tomorrow's lone report covers new home sales in August. Again, this typically has little or no effect on mortgage rates.

We'll brief you more fully on Thursday and Friday's more important reports later in the week.

By the way, senior Fed officials have a large number of speaking engagements this week. But we already know the central bank's thinking from last Wednesday's events. So, they'd have to say some shocking things to have any impact on mortgage rates.