So much treasury issuance, inflation expectations, current liquidity levels, and the $2 trillion in MBS that the Fed still needs to get rid of. Lots of potential sources of upward pressure on mortgage rates in particular. I wouldn't be surprised to see short term rates continue to go down a bit, but long term rates have a lot of upward pressure.

The market is horrible right now. I came out of BYU in 2012, and also wished I could have bought back in 2012, 2013, 2014, etc. But I moved a lot for work the first 8 years of my career, and didn't get my final area of work assignment until 2022, when I started actively looking for a house. I also felt like I missed out as prices almost doubled from 2012-2019, and now, feel like I am completely screwed as they more than doubled again from 2020-2024. My salary hasn’t even close to kept up with that, even with years of employment and promotions. Many houses I would have loved to buy in 2019 if I could have now cost double what they did then. All due to Fed free money and artificially repressed rates.

I have well over 6 figures of cash saved from living in dumps, scrimping and consistently investing the past 8 years, but I don't really even have the option to "stretch" for a house since most starter homes exceed the bank DTI limits they will lend based on salary, even with such a big down payment. Even if they'd approve it, I'd be paying something like 70% of my take home pay on PITI alone, which is completely unreasonable. In many ways, I'm actually worse off having saved and invested for 8 years than I would be had I theoretically been able to buy back in 2012.

Hence I started looking for assumable mortgages about 6 months ago. I can afford current market home prices if I can get a rate at 3% or below. But they are wicked hard to find, and the Fed created another big problem for assuming loans with their rate manipulation - people who bought at much cheaper prices and refinanced to the low rates. Many of the homes I found that qualify for an assumption (usually FHA) were bought at much cheaper prices, so the assumable balance is very low, and you need upwards of $300k cash to close a deal.

It's a really tough market right now, I have had no luck cracking into it yet in two years, and my rent keeps increasing, which sucks. But as you say, markets change and nobody really knows how, but I really hope the market shifts and affordability returns to more normal historical levels.