Homebuying costs have gradually but noticeably declined in 2025. Grace Cary / Getty Images

The final Federal Reserve meeting of 2025 was completed this week, and with it, the final interest rate cut of the year was issued. Now comes the interesting part. After all, a Fed rate cut is never a guarantee, so lenders were operating a bit in the dark in the days and weeks leading up to the meeting. But now that the cut has been formalized and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has spoken about the trajectory of rate cuts in 2026, there's more information to digest for lenders.

This is particularly important for the mortgage rate climate , in which buyers and owners hoping to refinance have been encountering interest rates exponentially higher than they were at the start of the de

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