What war in the Middle East has to do with mortgage rates?

From Marketplace, I'm Sabri Beneshore in for David Brancaccio.

Mortgage rates had recently fallen to under 6%.

And then the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.

Mortgage rates proceeded to jump above 6%.

Coincidence, that is not. A threatened oil market has

already started to push up gas prices, which could translate into higher inflation, which mortgage

lenders have to factor in, and so mortgage rates went up. Marketplaces Samantha Fields has more

on how waves from a war, a half a world away, are landing on the shores of the U.S.

housing market.

Sudden conflict and uncertainty almost always caused volatility in the mortgage market.

But Darrell Fairweather at Redfin says you can't always know in advance whether the effect

will be negative or positive.

Fear of higher inflation because of higher oil prices tends to push rates up, but fear about global stability and economic growth tends to push rates down.

This time, so far, Susan Walkder at the University of Pennsylvania says concerns about rising oil prices seem to be winning out.

A key price for the inflation rate is oil. If oil markets are destabilized as they are right now,

and if oil prices, their significant increase continues. This is clearly going to raise the inflation rate.

Fear of that happening is what has pushed the yield on 10-year treasury bonds up and mortgage

rates up along with it. But Fairweather at Redfin says there are other factors at play, too.

We're going to get some economic data layered this week about what's happening in the labor

market, what's happening with retail

spending. And she says that data could have as much or more of an impact on mortgage rates than

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