U.S. Mortgages in 1982 vs. 2021 vs. 2023 — the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

30Y in 30D • Y18. It has been a wild journey in mortgage rates for the U.S. over the past 41 years from sky-high levels to record lows.

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When it comes to residential housing mortgages in the U.S., what do October 1982, January 2021, and October 2023 have in common?

Not much, as it turns out.

Each of those years was dramatically different from the other years in important ways when it came to the topic of 30-year fixed-rate mortgages.

Indeed, those three months almost couldn’t be more different once you begin to scratch the surface of what was going in house prices and mortgages.

And there are definitely lessons we should be taking away.

Let’s start with some basic numbers:

Spreadsheet creation and analysis performed by author, Dec. 2023. Data sourced from https://www.demandsage.com/average-us-income and https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html

Key points to note

1. The median house price in 2021 was almost 5.4 times the median house price in 1982.
2. The median house price in 2023 was 6 times the median house price in 1982.
3. Check out the 18.63% 30-year fixed mortgage rate from October 1982 — hard to imagine that level of mortgage interest rates today, isn’t it?
4. Note that even though median…