“Right now, a significant percentage of our transactions are cash,” Slusser reports. “The interest rates have not negatively impacted us in anyway whatsoever, but we believe that eventually they will.”
Over the past year, Slusser says there has been some bump in mortgage interest rates for deals in her market, but that hasn’t been much of a deterrence for borrowers. Rates are still near historic lows, and prices have only recently started to come back.
With the economy on life support, many think that now would be an awful time for the government to increase rates.
Perhaps the most vulnerable segment to such a move is the so-called “jumbo-buyer.” These are the folks who were leveraging everything to the hills during the housing bubble of the mid-2000s to buy McMansions.
According to Phillips, this segment will probably be hurt the worst when mortgage rates go up. Though they largely disappeared from the real estate scene after the market crashed, he believes they’d become virtually nonexistent once rates go up.
