As mortgage rates trend lower ahead of the new year, Chase Home Lending's head of refinance and home equity, Nina Gidwaney, joins Alexandra Canal on Wealth! to break down what she expects from the housing market in 2025.

"We hope that we'll see some relief in 2025. Of course, we can't predict where rates will go. I can tell you that if rates were to fall below 6%, about 4.7 million customers would become in the money for a refinance. And, of course, it would open up the purchase market and help prospective homebuyers get into the market. So we do hope that we'll see some additional rallying in [2025]," Gidwaney says.

She explains, "Here's how we're thinking about it. Obviously, with the recent rallying in September and October and the Fed cutting their rate by about 50 basis points, that created some alleviation in the refinance rates and also purchase rates. We saw some good momentum in that period of time."

"So, we would expect that as customers continue to get more comfortable with more elevated rates, that they may be willing to get out of the lock-in effect ... if they're sitting on an ultra-low rate, that they may be willing to trade that for a higher rate in order to be able to move and switch into a different home. That will then create more inventory and more opportunities for prospective homebuyers to get into the market."

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This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.