Portland Mortgage Market Update — November 1, 2024

In a week full of conflicting data, mortgage rates suffered. The ADP report showed 233K jobs created during the month, while today's BLS report shows only 12K being created. The PCE report showed inflation continuing its trend towards the Fed's 2% benchmark. Regardless what data came out, the markets seemed concerned about uncertainty surrounding next week's election and the rising government debt, which led to rising yield prices and worse mortgage rates.

Even so, the market is betting there is a 98% chance the Fed cuts rates another 25 points at their meeting next week. While this doesn't always translate to improved mortgage rates right away, hopefully it will shore things up and reverse this worsening trend we have seen for the past couple of weeks.

And oh yeah, that election next week should help things. If nothing else, it should help provide clarity on the path going forward for the next 4 years. Although historically speaking elections have almost 0 bearing on interest rates, it will hopefully calm the markets down a bit and provide remove some uncertainty for potential buyers.