Just went back and looked at some mortgage rate data from late 2023 and honestly the shift was pretty significant. Around November that year, the 30-year fixed was sitting at 8.05%, which was up from the week before. I remember people were talking a lot about how expensive borrowing had gotten for home purchases.

What caught my attention was the gap between the 15-year and 30-year mortgage rates november 2023. The 15-year was at 7.24% while the longer term was pushing 8%. So if you wanted to pay off faster, you'd save on interest but obviously your monthly payments would be way higher - we're talking like $912 a month on a 100k loan versus $737 for the 30-year. That's a real difference for people's budgets.

The jumbo mortgage rates were also trending up that same period, hitting 7.95% for the 30-year fixed jumbo loans. For anyone looking at bigger properties, that meant serious money in interest payments over time. I calculated it out and on a 750k loan you'd be looking at over 1.2 million in total interest.

What's interesting looking back is how much mortgage rates november 2023 reflected what was happening with the Fed at that time. They'd been hiking rates pretty aggressively, and while Fed moves don't directly push mortgage rates up, the whole economic picture - inflation, lending conditions, everything - was pushing borrowing costs higher across the board. People were having to get more creative with their options, looking at FHA loans, VA loans, that kind of thing to make deals work.