This is a YouTube video titled "Do Rates go Down during Election Years" containing a monologue or presentation discussing the relationship between US presidential election years and mortgage rate trends, analyzing historical data from 1955 to recent elections and concluding that mortgage rates are influenced more by economic factors than election outcomes. The content was created in December 2023.
Do mortgage rates go down in election years? I've heard this mentioned more and more recently, so wanted to dive in. Since 1955, there have been 17 US presidential elections, but only seven times did mortgage rates actually go down in the election year. If we unpack the last two presidential elections, I think it'll make more sense. So in 2016, mortgage rates did go down leading up to the US election, but that was because the Chinese stock market crashed early that year and then the UK left. The European Union probably heard all the Brexit headlines. So those are weakening of the economy that brought mortgage rates down. And then when Trump won the presidential election in 2016, mortgage rates actually jumped up about a half percent. Sense this is because the investors figured that this would be more spending and probably a stronger economy hurting mortgage rates. And then in 2020, mortgage rates did drop as well. But this is because of COVID which weakened the economy, brought mortgage rates down. So mortgage rates don't really care who the presidential candidates are, what the election results are. They care about the economy.
