The Mortgage Rate “Range” to Expect for the Rest of 2025

Dave:
This is the mortgage rate range to expect for the rest of 2025. President Trump is feuding with Fed chair Jerome Powell. Tariffs could cause inflation. Recession risks are rising. Will all this cause mortgage rates to finally fall or could they actually go back up? There’s a ton of uncertainty right now, but as investors, we all just want to know which way are mortgage rates going to move. So today I’m going to dive into why mortgage rates are changing so much, what might happen next and what smart moves you can make to protect and grow your portfolio If you’re investing in 2025 or maybe you’re just trying to decide if now is a good time to buy, you’re going to want to listen to this one.
Hey, what’s up everyone? It’s Dave head of real estate investing at BiggerPockets and maybe you’re like me and you can remember a time way back when mortgage rates were steady and were only a minor part of being a real estate investor. It feels like a distant dream, right? Because the reality is that nowadays we need to be thinking about mortgage rates more regularly because there is a lot of volatility in the housing market and as you probably know, mortgage rates really matter to me actually the direction of basically the entire housing market, including housing prices, the state of sales volume and pretty much everything else are highly dependent on mortgage rates and the direction that they move in in the coming months. So it is pretty important that all of us as investors wrap our heads around this and I think I can help this all make at least some sense.
In addition to owning and operating a real estate portfolio for the last 15 years, I’m also a housing market and economic analyst, and I think those skills have given me some advantages in my investing and I want to pass them along to you, particularly in these types of investing climates because right now we’re seeing a pretty big divide between the data and some of the popular narratives about what’s happening in the real estate market. And I think you should know the real situation. So here it is. Despite what you’ve probably heard in the mainstream media or on social media or from your random cousin, the path forward for mortgage rates is not clear. And yes, I know people have been saying for months or even years, I think that it’s just a matter of time before mortgage rates fall. And in a way that is true, but right now there’s not a clear timeline on when that will happen.
We might actually even see rates go back up for periods in the near future. We’re in this super volatile period. Just consider what has happened over the last 12 months. A year ago, rates were about seven and a half. This was last May. Then they dropped all the way down to 6% last August, which was a huge improvement, but then they just went right back up to 7.25% in January. Then in April they went back down to 0.6%. Now as of this recording, they’re back up to 7%. It has absolutely been a rollercoaster ride. And yeah, it is true that mortgage rates are always moving somewhat, but this level of change, which you might hear me call volatility is not normal. And not even just from a data perspective, let’s just call it like it is. It is super annoying and frustrating that it is always changing because having high interest rates is one thing, but having higher interest rates and unpredictable interest rates, it’s just not fun for real estate investors.
The first thing that you need to know and to remember throughout this episode is that the Fed doesn’t set mortgage rates. Let’s just say it again. The Fed does not set mortgage rates. This is something that so many people incorrectly assume The Fed can indirectly influence mortgage rates through the federal funds rate, but they do not control mortgage rates. That is pretty much up to what happens in the bond markets. Bonds and mortgage rates are very closely tied when yields on bonds go up. So do mortgages when yields on bonds decline. So do mortgage rates, just remember that. So the question then becomes why haven’t mortgage rates fallen like people were expecting? Well, it should be simple. Now, bond yields have gone up and there are a lot of complicated reasons for this, but I’ll give you the sort of TLDR version. Bond investors do not like inflation and they do not like instability when they’re afraid of inflation or feel uncertain about the US government’s commitments to repay its debts, bond yields rise and when the opposite is true, like when they’re worried about recessions, bond yields tend to fall.
And it seems that at least since September October of 2024, they’ve been basically oscillating back and forth between inflation fears and recession fears. And they’re essentially just taking all of us real estate investors along with them for this wild and frustrating rollercoaster ride. Every time some piece of news comes out or a new policy is implemented, bond investors react and I think we should be real. They seem very sensitive right now. They all just react and we’re basically at their mercy. So that brings us up to speed about how we got to where we are, but everyone wants to know where we’re going from here, why Trump and the Fed are fighting right now and what you should do with your own portfolio. We’ll get to all that right after this quick break. This week’s bigger news is brought to you by the Fundrise Flagship Fund and that’s in private market real estate with the Fundrise Flagship fund. Check out fundrise.com/pockets to learn more.
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets pocket. We’re here talking about mortgage rate forecasts and before we went to the break, we were talking about how we arrived at the point we are today and how mortgage rates are largely influenced by the whims and the beliefs of bond investors. So then to figure out what comes next, we basically need to channel our inner bond investors and try to think like them as best that we can. And to me there are three major narratives that could possibly drive mortgage rates in the coming months. Those are an economic slowdown, which is a K recession inflation and this new thing called the sell America trade, which I’ll explain in just a minute, but let’s go through each of these one by one and we will start with a recession. Now I know people have been claiming a recession is coming four years now and they have been wrong, but that talk has definitely been increasing of late with a few key recession indicators starting to flash warning signs.
Now the consensus among economists and Wall Street strategists has shifted sharply in just a couple of months. The IMF cut its UF growth forecast to 1.8% citing trade tensions and weakening consumer confidence. JP Morgan pegs the probability of a recession at 60% now up from 40% earlier this year, and Goldman Sachs is about even odds at 45%. So what’s driving this? It’s definitely a confluence of things, but I think the most recent fear is because of the aggressive tariffs President Trump has implemented. He himself has said that there could be some short-term pain associated with the changes he’s making. We are seeing some generalized slowing of global growth and there’s recent data that points to consumer sentiment and business sentiment taking what I would honestly call a nosedive. It is really going down. Even still, there are a few bright spots this labor market is doing surprisingly well.
There is some resilience in consumer spending, so we’re seeing sort of both sides of the recession picture and the overall outlook is pretty cloudy. Now, the Fed people still think that they’re going to cut rates slowly and that could help the risks of a recession, but with inflation risks still lurking. They seem to be hesitant to cut too soon. That has sort of led to this public spa between Trump and the Fed, which we’ll talk about in just a little bit. But first, let’s talk about the second indicator on bond investors minds, which is inflation After the sort of wild ride that we were on in 2022 and the sticky inflation that we just got through in 2023 and 2024, the latest data is pretty encouraging. It shows us that annual inflation has cooled to about 2.4% as of March, and that is down from 2.8% the previous month.
This it’s huge progress from where we were a few years ago, and there are some particular bright spots with energy prices dropping and the very sticky rent and shelter inflation. We’ve talked about a lot on the show starting to cool off. Let’s just be clear here that in terms of the data we have, inflation has been heading in the right direction, but data is obviously inherently backward looking and there is fear inflation could swing back in the direction no one wants because the policy environment has shifted. Historically, tariffs have led to inflation and I don’t really see a reason why what they wouldn’t do the same this time around. If it costs companies more to import goods into the US or produce those goods domestically, they will very likely pass some of those costs onto consumers and that leads to higher prices, which is inflation.
I think most economists are right to think that we will see that upward pressure on prices as the year progresses. Just as an example, Morgan Stanley bumped its 2025 inflation forecast up to 2.5%. Goldman Sachs warns that core PCE inflation could hit 3% if tariffs stick around. So just as a quick summary of inflation, inflation’s doing okay right now, but there’s worries it could go back up, but no one I’ve seen, no credible source I’ve seen has been predicting some massive hike in inflation to anywhere close to what we saw in 2022 or even 2023. But they’re saying we could basically take a step or two backwards from the positive trend we’ve been on over the last couple of years. Those are probably the two big things on bond investors minds right now and why mortgage rates are fluctuating is that we have inflation fears, we have recession fears, but we need to talk about the fact that these two fears are existing at the same time because it’s kind of unique.
Normally in an economy you get either one of the other, you either get a recession or inflation. But the idea that these two things could coexist is a situation called stagflation and that could create more problems for the economy, but it’s also creating this uncertainty about mortgage rates. First and foremost, you could probably see based on what I’ve said so far, why mortgage rates are swinging. I said earlier in the show that bond yields which directly influence mortgage rates are impacted primarily by the fears of recession and the fears of inflation and which one is getting worse at a given point in time. So the fact that both of these fears exist makes sort of sense why there’s this volatility, but there is sort of more to it than that. This potential for stagflation or at least the uncertainty around the direction of GDP growth and inflation have created a difficult situation for the Fed.
It means the fed’s hands are somewhat tied. They can’t really lower rates for fear of inflation and they can’t raise rates for fear of recessions. It’s a tough spot for the Fed or any central bank to be in and fed chair Jerome Powell has said as much, now President Trump disagrees. He thinks rates should come down and he has said so repeatedly and publicly, but Powell, at least for now, has been holding his ground despite Trump’s public ponderings of whether or not Powell should be fired. So this is why, although you may be hearing that the Fed is going to cut rates, it may not happen. Most economists still think the Fed will cut twice in twenties 25, but it’s not certain, especially if inflation reverses course. But this pact between Powell and Trump, plus the general uncertainty in the economy right now leads us to our third factor that’s influencing mortgage rates, which is the quote sell America trade.
If you haven’t heard this term before, sell America trade is a term. It was just recently coined by a Wall Street analyst, but it’s sort of been picked up across the financial media in plain English. The Sell America trade is when investors, global investors dump us assets. This is stocks, bonds, even the dollar in favor of foreign markets or some traditional safe havens like gold. And this dynamic does not usually happen, but it happened over the last couple of weeks where we saw all three of these things happen. We saw stocks go down, we saw bond yields climb, and we saw the dollar decline all at once. That is very unusual. Typically when there’s a off in stocks, you see investors move their money to the safety of US treasuries. But this April we’ve seen numerous occasions where stocks have sold off, so have treasuries, the dollar is weakened.
It’s weird and it is not good because while we don’t know precisely who is selling and why, the long of short of it is that investors are moving their money out of US assets and into foreign assets. And now this might not seem like a big problem, but it is particularly for mortgage rates in the us. Like I’ve said repeatedly, our mortgage rates are dependent on US treasuries and US treasuries is dependent on demand. If a lot of investors want to lend money to the US government in the form of US treasuries, interest rates or the yields on those treasuries go down and they take mortgage rates down with them. But if there is less demand for us treasuries like we saw on these occasions where people were just selling US assets, bond yields will rise and mortgage rates will go up as well. And this is one of the main reasons alongside inflation concerns why mortgage rates have risen in recent weeks despite a selloff which would normally bring mortgage rates down, could be a one-time phenomenon.
We don’t know. It is definitely not a trend, but if it does continue, it spells trouble for mortgage rates and honestly I think for the entire US economy. But as of right now, I don’t want to raise too many alarms because it just happened once or twice in April. But it is something that is so unusual that I do think that it is worth mentioning. So just to summarize where the direction of mortgage rates are, it will depend on inflation, it will depend on recession. And our third variable, which is more of like a black swan variable, this sell America trade. Given that if you want to know where mortgage rates are going, you can ask yourself where you think these trends will go. Is a recession coming? Will inflation spike? Will investors flee us assets? Of course no one knows for certain, but if you have a strong thesis in any of these directions, you can use it to project which way mortgage rates will move and inform your own investing decisions. Now, what do I personally think and what investing moves am I going to make? I’ll share when we get back from this short break.
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. We’re here talking about what happens with mortgage rates in this new economic reality that we’re living in. And as I said before the break, I’ll give you my thoughts on what happens from here, but you may not like it because my educated highly researched, best guess is that rates are going to stay relatively high for the foreseeable future. As we’ve talked about throughout the show, predicting mortgage rates is trying to predict the bond market, and I think there’s just too much uncertainty for bond yields to fall. Yeah, there are fears of recession that could bring down bond yields, but the risk of inflation is counteracting that. And the general caution investors are starting to show really for the first time in many, many years about American assets is also counteracting that for mortgage rates to fall, we need a recession without inflation and some more stability in our policies around trade and fed relations.
That’s how they come down. I mean, I don’t know if those things are going to happen and when, but that is the formula we need for mortgage rates to come down. If any of those three variables remain uncertain about recession, about inflation, about our policies, I think that rates stay relatively high. And frankly, I don’t know, maybe we’ll get clarity about some of these things, but the idea that we’re going to get clarity about all three of these variables in the next few months, I just don’t see that happening. And that’s why I think rates are going to stay relatively high. And of course they’re going to fluctuate week to week, month to month and maybe even up to a half a point or more, but I don’t see them going below 6.5% for the foreseeable future and maybe they’ll get above 7.1, but I think that’s kind of the range that I’m expecting mortgage rates to be for at least next three-ish months.
And I should mention that I believe this, even if Trump gets his way and the fed cuts rates, and I know you may disagree with this, and this might be controversial, but I think this may be true even if Trump fires Powell, because think about it. If the fed cuts rates, yes, that will lower some borrowing costs, but it will also spook investor about inflation, right? People are already spooked about inflation and lower rates could make that worse. So any potential cut might be offset by those inflation fears. Remember, this just happened, right? This isn’t some crazy hypothesis that I have. Remember when the fed cut rates in September and mortgage rates went up? Yeah, we have seen this movie before, but what if Trump fires Powell and rates really come down like say 200 basis points? Same thing, at least to me, right? Because that actually might even be worse.
I think that would be sort of this double whammy. Yes, the federal funds rate will come down, but I think the fact that Trump fires Powell and the ending of Fed independence would introduce this whole new realm of risk for bond investors and bond yields could actually go up and inflation fears would go up too. This would just be pretty unprecedented. So I can’t say with a lot of certainty what would happen, but I think it might not work out as cleanly for mortgage rates as you might think. We’ve already seen how the bond market reacted when Trump just threatened to fire Powell. Bond investors didn’t like that. They felt like there was risk and bond yields went up. So regardless of what you think of Jerome Powell, him being fired may not get you the mortgage rate results that you’re looking for. So that’s my take.
And honestly, it’s not really that different than I predicted at the beginning of the year. I’ve been saying rates higher than most people expect somewhere in the mid to high sixes for the coming months between 6.5 and 7%. But I do think if things calm down over the next few months, if trade deals are struck, if Trump resists firing Powell, the general trend for mortgage rates is down, it’s just going to take longer and will probably be less of a decline than most people think. So in terms of real estate strategy, what am I doing about all this? I’m buying real estate. This is the upside era. After all, long-term investing is the name of the game. And despite a softening housing market and persistently high interest rates, there are still deals to be had. Concessions are up, price drops are up, negotiations are yours for the taking.
Don’t assume you can’t find a property that works because interest rates are at 6.8% or whatever. Go find a property you think has upside, calculate what price you could pay with current rates and make that offer. If it’s not accepted, find another property and try again. Don’t get me wrong, there is risk in these types of buyer’s market that we are in, but there are also so many opportunities. This is where opportunities come. So despite everything else going on right now, I’m sticking with my long-term strategy of finding great assets with lots of upside that I want to hold for 10 plus years. That may not be your strategy, but I’d encourage you all to at least follow me with the big pillars of my strategy right now, which are, be conservative in your underwriting. Assume minimal growth for the next few years. Ensure at least break even cashflow for properties that you want to hold and find two to three upsides for each deal. If you could do that in today’s environment, there’s no reason not to be active in this market that is sure to produce opportunities. Alright, that’s what we got. The mortgage rate outlook for May, 2025. Thank you all so much for listening. If you have questions, make sure to drop me a comment, or you can always hit me up on Instagram where I’m at, the data deli or on biggerpockets.com. Thanks for listening to the BiggerPockets podcast. We’ll see you next time.