[chollida1]

> Which should’ve helped a whole bunch of hard-working regular people to buy their first-time homes, but that is not what is happening it seems?

This is false if you think about it.

What drives the price of a house is what people can pay on their monthly payments.

As rates go down prices go up as people can afford to pay more.

Unfortunately for home buyers this means the downpayment goes up. What you end up with is a bunch of first time home buyers who can in theory afford the mortgage payments but can't build up the $200,000 nest egg required as a 20% downpayment on a $1,000,000 home.

When rates go back up home prices will drop and so will the size of the downpayment required, even though the person will pay about the same monthly on their mortgage.

Lower rate help those with existing homes and therefor existing equity more than those without homes.

[ethor]

It would have been true if the supply side of the market was working. Low interest rates have increased demand but the market has not been apply to increase the number of available homes to meet the demand, hence existing properties have increased in price.