From home sales ramping up in the South to when mortgage interest rates could come down, NBC’s senior business correspondent Christine Romans shares everything to know before buying a home in 2025. About: TODAY brings you the latest headlines and expert tips on money, health and parenting. We wake up every morning to give you and your family all you need to start your day. If it matters to you, it matters to us. We are in the people business. Subscribe to our channel for exclusive TODAY archival footage & our original web series.
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years just getting started and if you have plans to move or
maybe buy a house in 2025 we 2025 got some important things
need to know they're still trying to get used to saying
2025 hard NBC senior business correspondent Christine
Romans is here with all the details. All right, Christine
lay out the landscape for us where are we in the housing
market so right now at the end of December 2024 kind of a deep
freeze in mortgage applications and that usually happens in
December, it's the holidays people kind of just put that
out home buying on a on on a shelf but we saw in November
pending home sales actually picked up for 4 months in a row
so you are starting to see some signs of life and what has been
a pretty frozen real estate market so super interesting
home sales pick up just a little bit here housing market
experts essentially telling us people who are buying a home
have said we're recalibrating we're not going to wait for
lower mortgage rates we have to move for school or for a job
and so we're going to move all right so where are they going
like where the market in the South saw home sales pick up in
November by about 5%. So you look at that we're talking
about Florida, we're talking about Texas the Carolinas even
Tennessee, the Midwest up a little bit look at the
Northeast home sales down in the Northeast and the experts
telling us that the reason why the South was seeing those big
gains is because of the availability of homes and the
availability of jobs and so that was why you saw pick up
there in the South any sense about where we could be headed
in terms of mortgage rates coming down and like not like
you can I know I know she can.
Back up of 7% and a year so that could keep a deep freeze
on for for maybe the month of January is so interesting to me
the reason why rates are still so high a couple of reasons in
the market one looking at this new administration, the market
the bond market is telling us it could be inflationary some of
the plans of the Trump administration so rates are
staying high here in the bond market and also because the Fed
has signaled that it's not going to be aggressively
lowering interest rates this year so do I think rates will
be lower at the end of next year. I'm going to say yes,
I'm going to go out and say rates will be lower at the end
of this year, but how much lower if you're waiting to buy a home
waiting to refinance you might have to just pull the trigger
and 7% mortgage rates are the high 6 is because that's where
we are not coming back down to 4 times it doesn't feel like
we're coming back down to 40 times and a lot of people have
a mortgage at 3 and a half percent and they're stuck in
their house if they don't have to move they're not moving
because they don't want to pick up a mortgage is 7%. So thank
you Christine.
