The Affordability Crisis Is Getting Worse #finance

Ajouté : 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]People have been talking about the affordability crisis in the housing market for about 4 years now. And unfortunately, it just got worse. For the first time in almost 19 years, Treasury yields on 30-year Treasury bonds eclipsed 5%. The 10-year Treasury yield directly influences mortgage rates. Now, 10 years didn't hit 5% like the 30-year did, but they still went up.

[00:00:23]And as the yield climbed, mortgage rates climbed, too, getting closer to 7%.

[00:00:29]making home ownership drastically more expensive. A family that could afford a home a few years ago is now completely priced out. Even people actively looking for homes now are having to reassess what they can afford. Today, the national average on a 30-year mortgage is around, the last time I checked, is around 6.58%.

[00:00:49]On a $500,000 loan, that's about $3,100 a month. That's a lot of money. Compare that to the cheap borrowing days where rates were around around let's say three and a half% uh right before they started raising rates in 2022. That translates to a monthly payment on the same $500,000 of just over $2,200. Now that's still a lot of money, but 3,100 of the month versus $2,200 a month, that's a big difference. That's $900, $11,000 a year. Rates continuing to go up makes this affordability problem even worse.

[00:01:23]And the same pressure applies to car loans and credit card rates. Even though I would implore you to do everything you can to stay away from credit card debt, but it's making all forms of debt more burdensome and chipping away at people's monthly budgets. So, if you're trying to be wise with your finances, if you're looking to build a nest egg or take out a loan for your business or whatever it may be, I would caution you against relying on the norms that we've all gotten used to since 2007 as guarantees for what's going to keep going in the future. And please be careful who you take advice from. If you're relying on things you're seeing online or prompts you're putting into an AI chatbot or a product salesman coming to you with some magical perfect insurance product. I'm going to do a whole other thing on that later on. Make sure you understand the risks of what you're doing and do the math yourself or find someone who can help you do