Why the Fed Wants Home Buyers to Face Higher Mortgage Rates

This article was first published on NerdWallet.com.

The Federal Reserve yanked a short-term interest rate higher this week, making it more expensive to borrow money to buy a home or fix it up.

All in the name of slowing inflation.

The central bank raised the federal funds rate Wednesday by 0.5%, or half a percentage point. The Fed hadn't raised the federal funds rate by half a percentage point in one meeting since 2000.

The 0.5% increase is considered a "hawkish," or aggressively anti-inflationary, move. Prominent Fed officials had been hinting for weeks that they would deliver a larger-than-usual rate increase, and mortgage rates already had risen sharply in anticipation of it, climbing roughly three-quarters of a percentage point from mid-March to the end of April.

"The speeches that were happening in recent weeks were all about a much more hawkish stance, and that's really where this drive in interest rates happened," says Selma Hepp, deputy chief economist for CoreLogic, a property information and analytics provider.

The Fed's effect on mortgage and equity rates

The Fed's increase will cause other interest rates to rise, some directly and others indirectly.

A higher federal funds rate will directly increase rates charged on...