Federal Reserve officials are showing a broader appetite for raising interest rates than last month’s vote suggested, putting the next meeting in sharp focus for mortgage-rate watchers.
Minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee’s July meeting, released this week, show most participants viewed tightening as likely if inflation fails to ease toward the Fed’s 2 percent target.
“Many participants assessed that policy tightening would likely be necessary if inflation did not decline,” the minutes state. Three regional bank presidents — Cleveland’s Beth Hammack, Dallas’s Lorie Logan and Minneapolis’s Neel Kashkari — voted against holding rates steady, preferring an immediate quarter-point increase.
The panel left the benchmark rate unchanged in a range of 3.5 percent to 3.75 percent, where it has sat since January. Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh, who called for lower rates before taking the role in May, now faces pressure from more hawkish colleagues on the committee.
Housing-specific signals
Home-purchase mortgage activity remained depressed even as credit conditions eased elsewhere. Banks responding to the July Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey reported easier lending standards for a fourth consecutive quarter and stronger loan demand for a fifth consecutive quarter, with standards broadly back near pre-pandemic levels outside of consumer loans.
Why the timing matters
The Fed controls short-term rates for overnight lending between banks; mortgage rates are set separately by financial markets, though Fed policy shifts influence them. Inflation had shown signs of easing: Total personal consumption expenditures price inflation was 4.1 percent in May and was estimated to have stepped down to 3.7 percent in June, with core inflation edging down from 3.4 percent to an estimated 3.3 percent over the same period.
Participants judged risks to the inflation outlook as skewed to the upside, while risks to employment and growth were seen as skewed to the downside.
Three FOMC meetings remain this year, but the fall meeting falls just before the midterm elections, a timing officials may want to avoid for a policy shift. That leaves the panel’s next vote as the most likely window for action before a possible pause.
Discussion also touched on Chairman Warsh’s proposal to reduce the number of annual policy meetings from eight to six. No decision was made, and any change would not take effect before 2027.
Two inflation reports and a jobs report are due before the Sept. 16 vote and could meaningfully shift the odds in either direction.
