The financial news that actually matters
A homeowner in Cape Coral, Florida, who locked in a 3.25% mortgage rate in 2021 expected a stable monthly payment for the next 30 years. The loan has performed exactly as promised. What nobody underwrote was the insurance bill: her annual premium jumped from $1,800 to nearly $5,400 over three years, and when the increase…
Every spring, the housing market is supposed to wake up. Tax refunds land, school calendars create urgency, and warmer weather pulls buyers off the sidelines. Spring 2026 has not followed the script. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate climbed to 6.50% in Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey for the week ending May 22, 2026,…
When State Farm sent renewal notices to tens of thousands of California homeowners in early 2026, the numbers told a blunt story: premiums were jumping 17% in a single year. For a policyholder paying $2,400 annually, that meant roughly $400 more, on top of increases that had already accumulated over the previous four years. The…
For two years, would-be homebuyers told themselves the same thing: wait for rates to drop. By late May 2026, many of them stopped waiting. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate climbed to 6.22% for the week ending May 22, its highest point in a month, according to the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey published through…
Four months ago, a borrower shopping for a $400,000 home could lock in a 30-year fixed rate as low as 5.75% in January. That same loan now costs 6.22%, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey for the first week of May 2026. The difference works out to roughly $123 more per month, or…
The spring homebuying window just got more expensive. After drifting down to 6.30% in mid-April, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reversed course and climbed to 6.39% by the second week of May, according to Mortgage News Daily. The catalyst was not domestic: it was a military…
If you are shopping for a mortgage in May 2026, here is the number that matters most right now: 6.20%. That is where the 30-year fixed rate landed for the week ending April 24, according to the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) tracked by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. And according…
When Maria Gonzalez opened her homeowners insurance renewal letter in April 2026, the number had jumped again. Her premium for a three-bedroom house in a fire-adjacent community east of Los Angeles climbed 19% in a single year. She is not alone, and her experience is not unusual. For the fifth consecutive year, homeowners insurance premiums…
The 30-year fixed mortgage rate climbed to 6.21% for the week ending May 22, 2026, up 11 basis points from 6.10% the week before, according to the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey tracked through the Federal Reserve’s FRED database. The jump snapped a brief downward streak and arrived during a week when energy-driven inflation,…
Home insurance premiums are rising for the 5th straight year — California faces a 16% jump after the LA wildfires When State Farm sent renewal notices to roughly one million California policyholders this spring, the number at the bottom was 17% higher than the year before. That single rate hike, the largest a named carrier…