Mortgage rates barely budged this week, but that likely soon will change after the Federal Reserve’s bond tapering announcement this week.

Rates are largely predicted to rise on the heels of the Fed’s decision to reduce its bond purchases before the end of the year. The National Association of REALTORS® is forecasting that 30-year fixed-rate mortgages will average 3.5% by mid-2022.

Freddie Mac reports the following national averages for the week ending Sept. 23:

The vacation-home market has boomed over the past year and is not likely to slow any time soon, even as the rest of the housing market starts to cool, Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of REALTORS®, told The Escape Home, a newsletter for second-home owners.

Even as companies bring employees back to the office, vacation homes will remain in demand, Yun said. Part of vacation homes’ rise in popularity has been attributed to the growth in remote work.

With low inventory, high competition, and high prices, the summer has been a tough time to buy a home. But, the good news for buyers is that it looks like that’s about to change, and early October is poised to be a much better time to find and buy a property.

According to a recent article from realtor.com, the best week to buy a home in 2021 is right around the corner—the first full week of October, October 3rd through the 9th.

For the ninth consecutive week, mortgage rates stayed below 2.9%. But even with historically low mortgage rates, home buying may be following a more typical seasonal pattern of cooling off, Nadia Evangelou, senior economist and director of forecasting for the National Association of REALTORS®, writes on the association’s Economists’ Outlook blog.

Housing equity surged nearly 40% compared to a year ago and is at a record high, according to a new report from Black Knight, Inc. The average mortgage holder now has $173,000 in equity. That marks an increase of $20,000 just from the end of the first quarter, the report notes.

Americans want more social distance from their neighbors. A new Pew Research Center study finds a shift in home preferences since the pandemic with more consumers saying they want a larger home, even if it means local amenities are further away.

Mortgage rates continue to hover at all-time lows, marking the ninth consecutive week that rates have averaged below 3%.

Will bidding wars continue? Will home prices stay elevated? Will home buyer demand remain strong? Heading into the fall season, economists are optimistic about the market’s direction considering its unpredictability since the beginning of the pandemic.

For the most part, they agree it won’t be a return to the usual slowing pace of sales in the fall—nor will prices slide to the extent typical of the season as families settle into a new school year.

"With global uncertainty surrounding the delta variant of COVID-19, we saw 10-year Treasury yields drift lower and consequently mortgage rates followed suit,” said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dipped back to where it stood at the beginning of 2021, and the 15-year fixed remained at its historic low. This bodes well for those still looking to refinance, renovate, or even purchase a new home.”

Freddie Mac reports the following national averages with mortgage rates for the week ending Aug. 5:

More homeowners say they plan to renovate their homes this year, and they are increasingly planning to take advantage of higher home prices and use their home’s equity to complete the renovations, according to Bank of America’s “2021 Homebuyer Insights Report: Home Improvement and Equity Spotlight.”

“Greater reliance on the home as both a workspace and a family center has led many owners to tailor their homes to their needs,” the report says.