With rising mortgage rates, is now the right time to buy a home?
NORTH TEXAS (CBSNewsTexas.com) — Mortgage rates continued to rise this week, with the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage in the United States hitting 7.8% Tuesday. Rates are currently the highest they've been since 2000.
Zooming out, rates have been trending upward since reaching historic lows during the COVID-19 pandemic. At one point, in January 2021, rates dropped to 2.65%.
But if you look back even further, trends have gone up and down over the course of the past few decades. The highest average for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage on record—18.63% in October 1981.
So, if you're a prospective homebuyer, should you be thinking about buying a home right now?
University of North Texas real estate professor John Baen, Ph.D., said he believes now is a great time to buy. But he cautions there's not much inventory.
"You've got to be quick and you can't sit around because if the house is priced properly—less than $400,000—it's sold in a matter of three or four days," he said.
Baen said there are a couple of reasons he thinks now is a prime time to buy. The first? Home prices are only going to continue rising.
"Labor is requiring more, land is costing more, the demand is up," Baen said. "Houses in North Texas are going to double in value within five to seven years."
Right now, the median home price in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is $400,000, according to Texas A&M University's Texas Real Estate Research Center.
Baen also said this is a good time of year to buy. More buyers are on the hunt during the spring and summer months, because families tend to want to get kids moved before a new school year starts.