More than six out of 10 mortgages across the US are rooted at rates below 4%, Freddie said, with fixed-mortgage-rate homeowners having locked in around $66,000 on average per household. “Selling means giving up those savings,” it said.
An especially noteworthy finding from the report was that millennials and the Gen X cohort generally have low mortgage rates – but there’s still potential for refinancing among those generations.
While millennials have a low homeownership rate compared with baby boomers and Gen Xers, “the sheer number of millennial borrowers with rates [higher than] 7% is high,” the report noted. With all generations combined, “over two million mortgage borrowers have rates above 7%, with over 1.2 million borrowers from the Millennial and Gen X cohorts.”
Rates falling under 6.5% would bring an additional 1.4 million borrowers to a rate higher than 6.5%, Freddie said, mainly within Generation X homeowners, further boosting the number of potential refinances.
Stay updated with the freshest mortgage news. Get exclusive interviews, breaking news, and industry events in your inbox, and always be the first to know by subscribing to our FREE daily newsletter.
