Real estate investors have largely done well for the past few years. But with higher interest rates, things could be about to change.
The U.S. Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rates by 0.75 basis points on Wednesday, marking the third such hike in a row.
Higher interest rates translate to bigger mortgage payments — not good news for the housing market. But cooling down housing prices is part of what needs to be done to bring inflation under control.
“For the longer term what we need is supply and demand to get better aligned, so that housing prices go up at a reasonable level, at a reasonable pace, and that people can afford houses again,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday. “We probably in the housing market have to go through a correction to get back to that place.”
“From a sort of business cycle standpoint, this difficult correction should put the housing market back into better balance.”
Those words might sound scary, especially to those who lived through the last financial crisis — where the housing market went through a very, very difficult correction.
But experts say there are good reasons to believe that regardless of how things play out, it won’t be a return to 2008.
