By Annamaria Andriotis | realtor.com
The remaking of U.S. politics also is likely to upend the nation’s mortgage market. There are two reasons why: interest rates and regulation.
Changes in these areas could affect the course of the housing recovery, the availability of credit to borrowers and the extent to which lenders are willing to take on new risk. It may also affect the current structure of the mortgage market, in which banks mostly have focused on plain-vanilla and jumbo loans while nonbank lenders have targeted riskier borrowers, sometimes with more exotic mortgage products.
Interest rates are the most immediate concern. Donald Trump’s victory has led to a surge in bond yields and, in turn, mortgage rates. In the two days following the election, the average rate on 30-year fixed-rate conforming mortgages spiked a quarter of a percentage point to 3.87%, according to MortgageNewsDaily.com.
