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The average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate home loan jumped to 4.67%, mortgage-finance giant Freddie Mac said yesterday, marking the weekly figure’s highest reading since December 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported. The increase extends the 2022 surge in mortgage rates. The rise is hardly shocking, given the record-low rates reached in the pandemic period and concerns about high U.S. inflation readings. But it has been faster than many analysts expected. At the beginning of the year, the average rate on America’s most popular home loan was 3.22%. Over time, higher mortgage rates typically slow home-buying activity. But for now, there are ample signs that the U.S. home boom, featuring surging prices, ultralow inventories and persistent demand around the country, is far from over.

The interest rate on the most popular U.S. home loan jumped last week by the most in 11 years as bond market investors rapidly repositioned for the Federal Reserve to take more aggressive action to contain inflation, a survey showed today, Reuters reported. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said that the contract rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage shot to 4.8% in the week ended March 25 from 4.5% a week earlier. That was the largest one-week increase since February 2011, and it brought mortgage rates to their highest level since December 2018. Mortgage rates have now climbed by nearly 1.5 percentage points since the start of the year, the most rapid run-up in home borrowing costs since 1994.

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, the U.S. Congress allocated $46.5 million to help struggling low-income renters stay in their homes during the pandemic. The federal Emergency Rental Assistance program was designed to be a lifeline for those who fell behind on payments as work and income streams were disrupted. But most states were initially slow to disburse the funds — to the frustration of tenants, landlords and housing advocacy groups, Bloomberg News reported. After that sluggish start, there are now signs of significant progress. More than 4.3 million payments worth $20.5 billion were allocated to households nationwide through Jan. 31, the U.S. Treasury reported this month. The aid, while late, likely played a significant role in preventing hundreds of thousands of evictions, according to a new Bloomberg Eviction Lab analysis. Each state set its own ERA guidelines, but typically households with 80% of area median income or less were eligible for about 12 months of rent. Nearly two-thirds of ERA beneficiaries last year had extremely low incomes — families who make less than a third of the median income in their area. About 40% of tenants were Black and 20% were Hispanic, according to Treasury data through Dec. 31. Since each state implemented their own programs to distribute the federal money, progress has been uneven. While North Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia, and California spent more than 90% of their first round of ERA money, 15 states expended less than 30% of those early funds by end of January, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), a nonprofit advocacy group.

Single-family landlords are going upscale as they bet that more high-earning households will stay in the rental market, Bloomberg News reported. Invitation Homes Inc., the largest U.S. rental house owner, recently formed a $300 million joint venture that is targeting homes that will rent for 30% to 60% higher than the properties it usually purchases. The average rent on the company’s 82,000 homes was about $2,000 at the end of 2021, meaning it could offer homes for between $2,600 and $3,200 a month. The partnership with Rockpoint Group will invest roughly $750 million, including debt, to buy and renovate single-family houses, according to a March 4 statement. If higher-end single-family rentals catch on, landlords may follow a path laid out by the multifamily industry a decade ago, when developers embraced luxury apartments for city-dwelling millennials. Now, those same renters are seeking larger spaces, and many of them either can’t afford to buy a home — at least not in the neighborhood that they’d like to live in — or still prefer the flexibility of leasing.

Online-mortgage lender Better is firing roughly 3,000 employees in the U.S. and India as rising interest rates weigh on the volume of new loans, Bloomberg News reported. The total represents about 35% of the company’s workforce. Better eliminated approximately 9% of its workforce last year, announcing the move in a video conference call. Chief Executive Officer Vishal Garg later apologized for how that round of cuts was handled, and took a hiatus before returning in January. This time, the company said it would contact all of the affected workers personally. All will be eligible for severance payments, and U.S. employees will receive extended medical benefits.

Home prices soared almost 19 percent higher in 2021 as a severe lack of supply and low borrowing costs poured fuel on housing costs, according to data released yesterday, The Hill reported. The S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller housing price index, a closely watched gauge of home prices, rose 18.8 percent annually in December 2021, tracking the highest calendar-year increase in 34 years. The index rose 1.3 percent in December after seasonal adjustments, with prices rising in all 20 metro areas covered by S&P. Home prices have risen rapidly since spring 2020, when pandemic-driven stimulus, lockdowns and interest rate cuts spurred a sharp increase in home sales. The intense demand drove prices higher as buyers competed for a limited supply of houses and builders were unable to keep up amid pandemic restrictions. While home sales fell off in 2021, housing prices steamed ahead with buyers competing for dwindling inventory. Supply chain disruptions, shipping delays and other pandemic-related snarls have also hindered builders from filling the shortfall.