If you are thinking about buying a home, you have certainly heard about interest rates - The hottest topic in home buying right now!

We asked our in-house lender, Harmony Home Lending, to give us some background and projections on the state of mortgage interest rates for 2024. Here’s what they had to say:

"In a widely anticipated move, the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted to leave the benchmark federal funds rate unchanged after its final meeting of 2023. The federal funds rate is the overnight borrowing rate for commercial banks and credit unions and indirectly influences mortgage rates. It was the third consecutive FOMC meeting that resulted in a rate-hike pause, keeping the benchmark interest rate range between 5.25% and 5.5%.Though Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell, reiterated at a post-meeting press conference that inflation was still well above the Fed’s long-term, sustainable 2% target rate, policymakers released updated economic projections with a lower rate range in 2024 that included three cuts by year’s end, implying rate hikes are over for this cycle.

So, what does all this mean for mortgage rates in 2024?“Mortgage rates will continue to ease in 2024 as inflation improves and Fed rate cuts get closer,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, in an emailed statement. “Mortgage rates could near 6.5% by the end of the year, a key factor in starting to provide affordability relief to homebuyers.”Over the past year and a half, mortgage rates have skyrocketed to their highest levels in decades amid the Fed’s aggressive interest rate policy actions to tame inflation. Recently, however, rates have declined steadily as a result of the Fed’s rate-hike pauses and cooling economic data."