Baton Rouge weekly real estate update
If anything can be said about the current state of the real estate market, it’s that change is coming. For the last two years, the pandemic has kept mortgage rates extremely low across the U.S.—with rates dipping below 3% at certain points. Those record-low mortgage rates made it a lot less expensive for buyers to borrow money for home purchases, despite home purchase prices skyrocketing in markets across the nation.
That trend has now changed course. As of the week of Feb. 11, rates on 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage loans had topped 4% for the first time since 2019. That’s not only a jump from the week prior when rates hovered around 3.83%, but is also an unwelcome milestone for borrowers who were looking to purchase homes at record-low rates. This rate shift could also have a significant impact on other areas of the market—from refinancing loans to the rate of mortgage applications—over time.
That’s not the only significant real estate market shift that has occurred this week either. Not only are buyers facing rising interest rates, but home prices continue to soar, too. Right now, homebuyers are currently facing one of the priciest housing markets in history—and, in turn, the average purchase loan size has grown. The average purchase loan size for conventional loans set a new record of $453,000. The larger average mortgage loan is a clear sign homebuyers are borrowing larger sums of money to purchase homes in this expensive market.
To help you stay current on what’s happening in the housing market, real estate platform ZeroDown compiled a weekly real estate market report for Baton Rouge using data from Redfin. Housing market statistics feature data for the four weeks ending Jan. 30, 2022. Metros with more than 50 homes sold during the time period were considered for metro-level rankings for each statistic.
