Prayers for you and your wife. I don't think any home buying experience is ever silky smooth. But I think your timing is
very good. The way Biden's going, we're going to be heading into inflationary territory like we haven't seen in decades. A fixed-rate loan now and you can relax and have a nice glass of iced tea while the average interest rates climb.
A historical snapshot for a 30-year FRM:
- 1974: 9.19% - average CPI inflation rate: 11% - President, Ford
- 1979: 11.2% - average inflation rate: 11.3% - President, Carter
- 1981: 16.63% (all-time record) - average inflation rate: 10.3% (but 1980's was 13.5%) - President, Reagan; in his first year fighting to bring us back from the dismal Carter administration
- 1990: 10.13% - average inflation rate: 5.4% - President, G.H.W. Bush
- 2000: 8.05% - average inflation rate: 3.4% - President, Clinton
- 2009: 5.04% - average inflation rate: -0.4% (think Obama's Great Recession & Stagflation; 2008's rate was 3.8%) - President, Obama
- 2014: 4.17% - average inflation rate: 1.6% - President, Obama
- 2020: 3.7% - average inflation rate: 1.2% - President, Trump
The IMF U.S. Inflation Forecast has us at 3.5% in 2023...but that forecast is
before passing of the $1.8 trillion "American Families Plan," any so-called "infrastructure" bill, and before the massively record-breaking $6 trillion federal budget that will have the country's debt, proportionally, rise above even WWII levels. Could we see inflation rates under Biden start to rival Jimmy Carter's? Possible. Regardless, whatever sane, conservative mind replaces him in the White House will, if most of Biden's spending plans pass, be facing the same kind of battle that Reagan had to fight in the 80s to get the country back on a reasonable footing. But history's lesson: once things got out of hand in the 70s, it was almost 20 years before inflation rates were brought under control. And Biden could very well tip all that upside down again.
So, yep: It's a good time to buy!
