Jeff Ostrowski

Since President Donald Trump took office earlier this year, the regulatory agencies that oversee the U.S. mortgage market have been on the chopping block.

The Trump administration has moved quickly to scale back both the size and the scope of the federal government, including ordering layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Price reductions. Sparsely attended open houses. Homes languishing on the market as the weeks turn to months.

While the U.S. housing market continues to achieve new price records at the national level, some formerly hot corners of the country have experienced slowdowns over the past couple of years. Sun Belt states — which saw an impressive growth spurt during the pandemic — still boast strong job markets and continued population growth, but home prices are cooling.

The most difficult U.S. housing market in decades continues to encumber prospective homebuyers, who need an annual household income of $116,986 to afford the typical home, according to Bankrate’s new 2025 Housing Affordability Study. That’s almost a 50 percent increase since early 2020, when the income needed to buy a typical home was $78,236.
What’s more, homebuyers in 30 states and the District of Columbia need a six-figure household income to afford the typical home in their area.

Rocket Mortgage, the nation’s second-largest originator of mortgages, announced Monday it will buy Mr. Cooper, the industry’s largest collector of mortgage payments.
The $9.4 billion deal reflects a challenging market for mortgage lenders in general and for Rocket in particular. As mortgage rates shot from 3 percent during the pandemic to as high as 8 percent in 2023, loan activity declined, translating to less business for lenders.
What’s more, Rocket relinquished what was once a commanding lead.

For nearly five years, Americans with federal student loans were able to skip payments with no hit to their credit score.

Now that the pandemic pause is over, those payments are again showing up on credit reports — a change that could adversely affect scores for past-due borrowers, according to a new VantageScore analysis. A lower score might keep some borrowers, including would-be homebuyers, from qualifying for new credit and better interest rates.

In late 2024, Diana Muro paid $350,000 for a townhouse in Charlotte, North Carolina. When she closed on the home, she hit two milestones: Firstly, the software engineer achieved homeownership at age 27.

But Muro also became a first-generation homebuyer. Her parents, immigrants from Mexico, never bought a home, in part because her late father struggled to find lucrative work, in part because the family half-expected to move back to Mexico. “My family has always rented,” she says.

When Gina Williams moved into a Florida townhouse in late 2024, she became one of the tens of millions of Americans who count themselves as homeowners. Williams also joined a much smaller group: first-time buyers who have amassed more than $100,000 in down payment assistance.

Dozens of assistance programs nationally now offer six-figure down payment packages, a reflection of soaring home values.

U.S. home prices already are testing the bounds of affordability. A round of tariffs from the Trump administration threatens to force the costs of new homes even higher.

If the White House’s new tariffs takes effect, the cost of a new home would go up by about 5%, or more than $20,000 for a typical newly constructed property, according to two new analyses.

The conventional wisdom about private mortgage insurance (PMI) has long been that borrowers should try to avoid it. PMI is a requirement for conventional mortgage borrowers who put down less than 20% on a home — and it’s just one more cost squeezing buyers.

But in recent years, private mortgage insurers have lowered their rates. That means for some borrowers, it might make sense to put make a smaller down payment.

In yet another illustration of how high prices are squeezing homebuyers, a growing share of Americans are buying houses that are smaller than the ones they’d been renting.

That’s according to a new analysis from mortgage giant Freddie Mac, which found that, as of September 2024, 64 percent of buyers who moved out of single-family rental houses purchased homes that were bigger than their rentals. This is down from a high of 71 percent in 2013.

In any normal housing market, a doubling of interest rates would have pushed home prices down. But the post-pandemic housing market is anything but normal.

That's why home prices kept rising even as mortgage rates shot from 3% in 2021 to 8% in late 2023, says Michael Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association: “We have 50 million people in this country who are between 30 and 40 – peak homebuying years. We just have this enormous cohort of people who are looking for housing."

With home prices setting one record after another, it’s a terrible time to be a first-time buyer. New data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) shows just how challenging today’s housing market is.

High home prices are creating hurdles for would-be homeowners. First-time homebuyers in the past year fell to a record low of just 24 percent of all buyers, according to NAR’s 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. And the median age of first-time buyers rose to 38 years old, a record high.

Home prices have soared. In some parts of the U.S., a typical home costs more than $1 million. Many young Americans have simply given up on the American dream of homeownership. True, the financial deck is stacked against first-time buyers. But that doesn't mean you have to keep renting forever. In this easy-to-digest guide to the U.S. housing market, Bankrate.com reporter Jeff Ostrowski explains the basics and breaks down some ways to succeed.

This month’s widely anticipated Federal Reserve rate cut won’t lower mortgage rates as much as seen over the summer. Today's rates price in a September Fed cut.

The chasm between the nation’s priciest housing markets and the most affordable regions has been growing wider. The typical home price in Silicon Valley eclipsed $2 million during the second quarter of 2024. There are far more affordable housing markets in the Midwest, South and Rust Belt -- but the jobs picture isn't as enticing in those areas.