Portland Mortgage Market Update — April 24, 2026

Rates spent the week marching upwards as the quagmire in Iran continued. With no real end in sight and what appears to be an escalation in naval activity, oil prices continued upwards which pulled inflation fears and mortgage rates with it. Expect to remain in an elevated rate environment until things quiet down in the Strait of Hormuz and the supply for oil normalizes world-wide.

We did get a slight dip to rates this morning with the news of the DOJ dropping their criminal probe of Fed Chair Jerome Powell. This paves the way for Trump's (new) preferred pick for the Fed Leader, Kevin Warsh, who presumably will take a more aggressive look at rate cuts. Warsh spent time this week at his confirmation hearing where he indicated he wanted "regime-change" at the Fed, mainly moving away from the Fed's preferred measure of inflation (The PCE report) opting for a more updated model that wasn't named, and cutting out regular Fed press conferences which the Fed has used to issue "forward guidance", or telegraphing to the markets what Fed planned to do at their next meeting. In short, Warsh's new Fed will try to be more closed off to the public and nimbler to react to current data.

Not a lot of news this week so let's close this update out with an exercise. This one comes from Barry Habib with MBS Highway. Yesterday NAR released a Generational Trends report which showed that 65% of buyers think stocks are a better investment than homeownership. Let's assume that a buyer has $40K in stocks. That might get them a 10% return on investment, or $4,000 year over year. However, if they used that $40K for a 10% down payment on a home, they might only get a 3% appreciation on the home. HOWEVER, that 3% appreciation is based on $400K, so it actually nets out to a $12,000 gain year over year, equating to a 30% return on investment. Let's spread the word about the potential benefits of buying a home vs investing in the stock market, and if you need any marketing literature about benefits of homeownership or true cost of renting let me know!