Portland Mortgage Market Update — October 30, 2026

It was Fed week! The Fed met this week and to no one's surprise left their funds rate unchanged. In the post meeting press conference, Fed Chair Warsh acknowledged that inflation was running a but higher than they liked and employment was stable, to which multiple reporters asked a variation of "so why are you waiting to hike rates again?" His response was that the coming weeks would be an "information rich environment" that would help the Fed chart their path forward. Or in other words, the midterms are next week. So the Fed is going to wait and see what happens with midterms, what the President is going to do in Iran as a result of the outcome, and what might happen on the larger global front with the unrest in France and weaknesses popping up in Tech/AI.

Next week brings jobs week and the aforementioned midterms. The results of the midterms likely won't immediately impact mortgage rates, but if there is a change to the congressional balance we might see more pushback on the war in Iran and the current tariff/trade war. Remember, at the beginning of the year inflation was trending in the low 2% and heading downward, and spiked back up after the war impacted oil prices and energy costs. If we can get some resolution on the war and calm the global oil market, we would likely see inflation settle back down there which would help interest rates.

A quick exercise ahead of the weekend. I spoke to someone the other week that didn't see the benefit of the temporary rate buydown, so I figured I would run the numbers to show how we can use this tool to help our clients. Let's assume a $400K loan amount, based on a rate of 7.125%. A 2/1 buydown would cost about $9400 in seller credits (which goes directly to supplementing the buyer's monthly payment over the first 2 yrs of their loan). If they took that $9400 and applied to loan discount point costs, they could drop their rate to 6.49% which would save them about $170/mo (not bad!). However, it would take them making that payment 56 times before they recouped that $9400. That is 5.5 years of payments before paying the discount points actually makes sense to do so. So we need to be approaching it not as a way to shoehorn a payment that is going to increase down the road, but as a savings tool that allows the flexibility to refinance whenever they want if rates improve to a point where it makes sense.