US mortgage rates held steady this week with the 30-year fixed rate coming in at 6.66%. It's according to latest data from Freddie Mac who says the housing market remains cautiously resilient. Mortgage rates still at elevated levels versus a year ago. Our senior housing reporter, Clare Boston's following the latest. All right, Clare, so you note in your story here, mortgage rates were basically stuck here around 6-7. Explain that, Clare. How come?

Yeah, Josh, so we've been stuck at these current levels for basically a month now and I think what's going on is that the market is just in this holding flat pattern, given current inflation concerns and the war with Iran. We keep getting these fairly hot inflation prints like we saw yesterday with the PCE numbers. And the fact that oil prices are still high, really suggests that investors don't see a path for lower rates. You know, maybe the Fed is even going to need to hike. And I have to remind people that what the Fed does is not the same as what they what mortgage rates do, but they are related. And so I think a lot of people are going to be looking at what Fed Chair Worch is going to say tomorrow at Jackson Hole to try to figure out if rates could go any lower at all.

Yeah, all eyes on Worch tomorrow for sure. Clare, at 6-7, what does that mean for affordability, Clare? Like what does that mean for my monthly payment versus, you know, low rate years?

Yeah, so I ran these numbers on a $450,000 home, which is about average these days and a 10% down payment. So at the current rates close to 6-7, just looking at principal and interest, so not counting things like your insurance, your taxes, you're looking at a payment of $2,600 a month. Now, if we go back in time, back when rates were 3%, that same payment would only be $1,700. So you can really see that $900 difference is huge and that's just what it means when higher rates, they they really shut people out of this market.

I I was going to ask you, Clare, I mean, when you see rates at this level, does that generally keep buyers out of the market or do some significant number of folks start to think, you know what, this is it, that this is our new normal?

Yeah, so I think it's a little bit of both. When you look at the market, there are not a lot of buyers and not a lot of sellers. So that definitely means that there are people sitting on those 3% rates and not moving. But when I talk to realtors, they say, look, people are still moving, but the people who are moving are the people who have to. They are people who have new jobs or they just had a second kid and need that extra bedroom. But there's not a lot of people who are just for fun moving because they don't want to pay these current rates that we're seeing in the market right now.

What about homeowners listing right now, Clare? They have a mortgage. When does refinancing start to make sense? How do you think about that?

Definitely. So the conventional advice on a refi is that you want to be able to save at least a half a percentage point and ideally one whole percentage point off of your current rate. And the issue with right now is that there are people out there who have higher rates in the sevens or maybe the eights, but there's not that many because those people have had chances to refi in the last couple of years. Like even back in February, we saw rates at 6% and so a bunch of those people started to refinance, we had a whole mini refi wave. And so at 6.7, you know, you need your rate to be close to 8% before you'd want to refinance and there's just not that not that many many people like that left in the world.