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Markets in a Minute

How Closely Related Are Historical Mortgage Rates and Housing Prices?

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Growth in US home price by state Part 1 of 3
Housing Prices and Inflation Part 2 of 3
Mortgage Rates vs House Prices Part 3 of 3

How to use: Arrows on side of slides navigate between mortgage rate & house price data at the same point in time, and data with a two year house price lag.

Scatterplot showing the relationship between historical mortgage rates and house prices at the same point in time.
Scatterplot showing the relationship between historical mortgage rates and house prices with a 2 year house price lag.
Historical Mortgages Rates vs House Prices_Same Point in Time_Main
Historical Mortgage Rates vs House Prices_Two Years Later_Main
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Scatterplot showing the relationship between historical mortgage rates and house prices

This infographic is available as a poster.

Are Historical Mortgage Rates and House Prices Related?

Mortgage rates are rising at their fastest pace in at least 30 years. As mortgage rates climb, it becomes more expensive to finance a home purchase. This leaves many homebuyers with lower budgets. Could house prices drop as a result?

In this Markets in a Minute from New York Life Investments, we explore the relationship between historical mortgage rates and housing prices over the last 30 years. It’s the last in a three-part series on house prices.

Historical Mortgage Rates vs Housing Prices

To compare trends in historical mortgage rates and housing prices over time, we calculated year-over-year percentage changes. We used monthly data spanning from January 1992 to June 2022. Here’s a summary of movements over that timeframe.

Scenario# of Months
Mortgage Rate Decline, House Price Growth193
Mortgage Rate Growth, House Price Growth117
Mortgage Rate Decline, House Price Decline49
Mortgage Rate Growth, House Price Decline6

November 2006 has been excluded from the above tally as year-over-year mortgage rate growth was 0.0% at that time.

Mortgage rates and house prices have a weak positive correlation of 0.26. This means that when mortgage rates increase, house prices typically also increase. What could be contributing to this trend? Mortgage rate increases are associated with periods when the Federal Reserve is raising its policy rate in response to inflation that is higher than desired. Often, this coincides with strong economic growth, low unemployment, and rising wages, which can all strengthen home prices.

Over the last 30 years, it was quite rare for mortgage rates to rise while house prices simultaneously dropped. This only occurred in the early stages of the Global Financial Crisis and during the recovery.

DateMortgage Rate YoY ChangeHouse Price YoY Change
Aug 20070.8%-0.6%
Oct 20071.1%-1.9%
Jan 20101.6%-2.9%
Apr 20106.3%-1.5%
May 20103.3%-1.4%
Jul 20110.4%-3.8%

While mortgage rates saw some upward movement in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, it took the housing market longer to recover. In fact, housing prices didn’t see a positive year-over-year change until March 2012.

Is There a Lag Effect?

A change in mortgage rates may not be immediately reflected in housing prices. To test whether there was a lag effect, we also explored the relationship between historical mortgage rates and housing prices two years later.* For instance, we compared the annual percentage change in mortgage rates in 2020 to housing price growth in 2022.

Here’s what the data looked like with this two year lag of housing price growth.

Scenario# of Months
Mortgage Rate Decline, House Price Growth190
Mortgage Rate Growth, House Price Growth97
Mortgage Rate Decline, House Price Decline37
Mortgage Rate Growth, House Price Decline17

*We tested for a lag effect using house prices six months later, one year later, two years later, and three years later. The data using house prices 6 months later and three years later revealed no correlation between mortgage rates and housing prices. The data using house prices one year later revealed the same correlation as using house price data from two years later. November 2006 has been excluded from the above tally as year-over-year mortgage rate growth was 0.0% at that time.

The pattern was similar, albeit with a slightly negative correlation of -0.15. In other words, mortgage rates and house prices tended to move in opposite directions.

For example, this occurred in 2020 when mortgage rates were dropping and the Federal Reserve had not yet begun to raise its policy rate. Two years later in 2022, house prices were seeing record high levels of growth amid strong demand and low supply.

Compared to our first analysis above, there were also more instances where mortgage rates increased and house prices decreased. This activity all related to mortgage rates rising from 2005-2007 amid inflation concerns, with housing prices crashing in the following years due to subprime mortgages and the Global Financial Crisis.

Historical Mortgage Rates: One Piece of the Puzzle

Could the current rising mortgage rates cause housing prices to drop? In the last 30 years, there is no historical precedent for this apart from the Global Financial Crisis. Of course, subprime mortgages—mortgages to people with impaired credit scores—contributed to the housing market collapse at that time.

While researchers believe it’s unlikely housing price growth will turn negative, the pace of growth is slowing down. We can see this in the below chart showing trends between historical mortgage rates and housing prices over time.

Changes in historical mortgage rates and house prices over time. When the year-over-year mortgage rate changes has been above 20% for more than two months in a row, the pace of house price growth has slowed.

Historically, a slowdown in house price growth has occurred when mortgage rates increase rapidly. Since 1992, there have been four instances when mortgage rates rose over 20% year-over-year for more than two months in a row. Each of them has been accompanied by a deceleration in house price growth.

Time PeriodHouse Price YoY Change at StartHouse Price YoY Change at End
Sep 1994-Feb 19953.1%2.9%
Aug 2013-May 20147.2%4.7%
Sep 2018-Dec 20185.8%5.5%
Jan 2022-Jun 202218.4%16.2%

Note: House price data only available until June 2022 and does not reflect any fluctuations since that time.

In the first half of 2022, house price growth slowed by over two percentage points. However, it’s important to keep in mind that while mortgage rates and affordability can play a role in the housing market, there are other factors at play. The current market is buoyed by high demand as millennials reach their prime home buying years, coupled with a housing supply shortage.

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Markets in a Minute

What is the Success Rate of Actively Managed Funds?

For actively managed funds, the odds of beating the market over the long run are like finding a needle in a haystack.

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Actively Managed Funds

What is the Success Rate of Actively Managed Funds?

Over a 20-year period, 95% of large-cap actively managed funds have underperformed their benchmark.

The above graphic shows the performance of actively managed funds across a range of fund types, using data from S&P Global via Charlie Bilello.

Missing the Mark: Actively Managed Funds

Several factors present headwinds to actively managed funds.

  • Trading costs: First, fund managers will trade more often than passive funds. These in turn incur costs, impacting returns.
  • Cash holdings: Additionally, many of these funds hold a cash allocation of about 5% or more to capture market opportunities. Unlike active funds, their passive counterparts are often fully invested. Cash holdings can have the opposite effect than intended—dragging on overall returns.
  • Fees: Active funds can charge up to 1-2% in investment manager fees while funds that tracked an index passively charged just 0.12% on average in 2022. These additional costs add up over time.

Below, we show how active funds increasingly underperform against their benchmark over each time period.

Fund Type1 Year
% Underperformed
5 Year
% Underperformed
10 Year
% Underperformed
20 Year
% Underperformed
All Large-Cap 51879195
All Small-Cap 57718994
Large-Cap Growth 74869698
Large-Cap Value 59698587
Small-Cap Growth 80598597
Small-Cap Value 41819192
Real Estate 88627487

As we can see, 51% of all large-cap active mutual funds underperformed in a one-year period. That compares to 41% of small-cap value funds, which had the best chance of outperforming the benchmark annually. Also, an eye-opening 88% of real estate funds underperformed.

For context, Warren Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathaway has beat the S&P 500 two-thirds of the time. Even the world’s top stock pickers have a hard time beating the market’s returns.

2020 Market Crash: A Case Study

How about active funds’ performance during a crisis?

While the case for actively managed funds is often stronger during a market downturn, a 2020 study shows how they continued to underperform the index.

Overall, 74% of over 3,600 active funds with $4.9 trillion in assets did worse than the S&P 500 during the 2020 market plunge.

Stage of 2020 CycleTime Period% Underperforming S&P 500
CrisisFeb 20 - Apr 30, 202074.2
CrashFeb 20 - Mar 23, 202063.5
RecoveryMar 24 - Apr 30, 202055.8
Pre-CrisisOct 1 2019 - Jan 31, 202067.1

Source: NBER

In better news, roughly half underperformed through the recovery, the best out of any market condition that was studied.

The Bigger Impact

Of course, some actively managed funds outperform.

Still, choosing the top funds year after year can be challenging. Also note that active fund managers typically only run a portfolio for four and a half years on average before someone new takes over, making it difficult to stick with a star manager for very long.

As lower returns accumulate over time, the impact of investing in active mutual funds can be striking. If an investor had a $100,000 portfolio and paid 2% in costs every year for 25 years, they would lose about $170,000 to fees if it earned 6% annually.

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Markets in a Minute

Ranked: The Largest Bond Markets in the World

The global bond market stands at $133 trillion in value. Here are the major players in bond markets worldwide.

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The Largest Bond Markets in the World

The Largest Bond Markets in the World

In 2022, the global bond market totaled $133 trillion.

As one of the world’s largest capital markets, debt securities have grown sevenfold over the last 40 years. Fueling this growth are government and corporate debt sales across major economies and emerging markets. Over the last three years, China’s bond market has grown 13% annually.

Based on estimates from the Bank for International Statements, this graphic shows the largest bond markets in the world.

ℹ️ Total debt numbers here include both domestic and international debt securities in each particular country or region. BIS notes that international debt securities are issued outside the local market of the country where the borrower resides and cover eurobonds as well as foreign bonds, but exclude negotiable loans.

Ranked: The World’s Top Bond Markets

Valued at over $51 trillion, the U.S. has the largest bond market globally.

Government bonds made up the majority of its debt market, with over $26 trillion in securities outstanding. In 2022, the Federal government paid $534 billion in interest on this debt.

China is second, at 16% of the global total. Local commercial banks hold the greatest share of its outstanding bonds, while foreign ownership remains fairly low. Foreign interest in China’s bonds slowed in 2022 amid geopolitical tensions in Ukraine and lower yields.

Bond Market RankCountry / RegionTotal Debt OutstandingShare of Total Bond Market
1🇺🇸 U.S.$51.3T39%
2🇨🇳 China$20.9T16%
3🇯🇵 Japan$11.0T8%
4🇫🇷 France$4.4T3%
5🇬🇧 United Kingdom$4.3T3%
6🇨🇦 Canada$4.0T3%
7🇩🇪 Germany$3.7T3%
8🇮🇹 Italy$2.9T2%
9🇰🇾 Cayman Islands*$2.7T2%
10🇧🇷 Brazil*$2.4T2%
11🇰🇷 South Korea*$2.2T2%
12🇦🇺 Australia$2.2T2%
13🇳🇱 Netherlands$1.9T1%
14🇪🇸 Spain$1.9T1%
15🇮🇳 India*$1.3T1%
16🇮🇪 Ireland$1.0T1%
17🇲🇽 Mexico*$1.0T1%
18🇱🇺 Luxembourg$0.9T1%
19🇧🇪 Belgium$0.7T>1%
20🇷🇺 Russia*$0.7T>1%

*Represent countries where total debt securities were not reported by national authorities. These figures are the sum of domestic debt securities reported by national authorities and/or international debt securities compiled by BIS.
Data as of Q3 2022.

As the above table shows, Japan has the third biggest debt market. Japan’s central bank owns a massive share of its government bonds. Central bank ownership hit a record 50% as it tweaked its yield curve control policy that was introduced in 2016. The policy was designed to help boost inflation and prevent interest rates from falling. As inflation began to rise in 2022 and bond investors began selling, it had to increase its yield to spur demand and liquidity. The adjustment sent shockwaves through financial markets.

In Europe, France is home to the largest bond market at $4.4 trillion in total debt, surpassing the United Kingdom by roughly $150 billion.

Banks: A Major Buyer in Bond Markets

Like central banks around the world, commercial banks are key players in bond markets.

In fact, commercial banks are among the top three buyers of U.S. government debt. This is because commercial banks will reinvest client deposits into interest-bearing securities. These often include U.S. Treasuries, which are highly liquid and one of the safest assets globally.

As we can see in the chart below, the banking sector often surpasses an economy’s total GDP.

Banking Sector

As interest rates have risen sharply since 2022, the price of bonds has been pushed down, given their inverse relationship. This has raised questions about what type of bonds banks hold.

In the U.S., commercial banks hold $4.2 trillion in Treasury bonds and other government securities. For large U.S. banks, these holdings account for almost 24% of assets on average. They make up an average 15% of assets for small banks in 2023. Since mid-2022, small banks have reduced their bond holdings due to interest rate increases.

As higher rates reverberate across the banking system and wider economy, it may expose further strains on global bond markets which have expanded rapidly in an era of dovish monetary policy and ultra-low interest rates.

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