Mortgage rates move unpredictably in the weeks after presidential elections — not always, but often enough to humble any forecaster who is asked to predict mortgage rates in November of an election year.
To see how difficult it is to predict the future, answer this one-question quiz about the past: What happened to mortgage rates after the disputed 2000 election — did they go up, down or stay about the same?
The answer is that the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was steady in November, remaining in a range of 7.73% to 7.79%, according to Freddie Mac records. But the rate tumbled more than half a percentage point that December, which is an unusually fast descent.
It fell both before and after the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore decision on Dec. 12, and averaged 7.13% in the last week of the year.
Since 2000, election-year Novembers have sent rates up, down, about the same, and up again.
• When George W. Bush was reelected in 2004, mortgage rates climbed.
• The 2008 election occurred during a financial crisis, and mortgage rates plummeted almost 1 percentage point in five weeks with the 30-year fixed averaging 5.53% the week ending Dec. 4.
• When Barack Obama was reelected in 2012, mortgage rates dropped, but not as dramatically as four years before. The 30-year fixed fell from 3.39% the week before the election to 3.32% the week ending Nov. 29.
