Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
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Marc Giauque reportingIt isn't only costing you more money to fill your gas tank. Mortgage rates are now at the highest level they've been in four years. The changes are particularly impacting people riding the roller coaster of adjustable rate mortgages.
In the basement of Bruce Johnson's home, sits the partially built fuselage of a kit airplane. Obviously it won't stay with the house when he sells it.
Bruce Johnson: "I just recently retired."
Bruce Johnson: "It took it up about a hundred dollars..a hundred and ten dollars a month."
Johnson is now more motivated to move.
Bruce Johnson: "If we stay here another year and go into a second period, we're certain it will go very close to eight and a quarter percent."
That's not quite twice as much as where he started.
Bruce Johnson: "It's a very significant increase in house payment. We don't have an awfully big mortgage."
Johnson saved a lot of money to begin with.
Bruce Johnson: "I'm not at all sorry we did it. We're at the point now where we'd ultimately get to, where we have to make a decision."
A decision to try to sell the house more quickly, or re-finance to a fixed rate.
Bruce Johnson: "I've already talked to a mortgage broker."
Mortgage brokers say the changes are moving a lot of people to re-finance.
Bruce Johnson: "It's beginning to have some definite impact in the market place."
Wells Fargo Bank Economist, Dr. Kelly Matthews says that impact could be felt mostly by people just trying to get into a house.
Dr. Kelly Matthews, Wells Fargo Bank Economist: "People might decide well, the amount of money they would have to have to qualify for a loan for the home that they want to purchase..they're wage levels simply don't match up."
Analysts predict fixed and adjustable rates will continue to go up, in the short term. But Matthews says there's good news, at least in Utah. He says a strong economy, including strong job growth, should continue to keep builders building, and buyers buying homes.
