By Naveen Athrappully

The median monthly mortgage payment in the United States hit $2,742 for the four weeks ending March 29, marginally up from last year and registering the first year-over-year increase in almost six months, real estate brokerage Redfin said in an April 2 statement.

“Housing payments are climbing because the Iran war and rising oil prices have pushed the weekly average mortgage rate up to a six-month high of 6.38 percent,” the brokerage said.

In 2025, the average weekly mortgage rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage had hit its annual high of 7.04 percent in mid-January, according to data from Freddie Mac. Rates then entered a downward trend, falling to a low of 5.98 percent for the week ending Feb. 25 this year, the first time since September 2022 that rates had fallen below the 6 percent level.

However, since Feb. 25, mortgage rates have been on the uptick and were at 6.46 percent for the week ending April 1, up from 6.38 percent the previous week. The higher rates have contributed to rising monthly mortgage payments.

In addition, “home-sale prices are a factor, too; the median home-sale price rose 2.1 percent from a year earlier during the four weeks ending March 29—the biggest uptick in a year,” Redfin said.

“High costs, along with economic uncertainty from the Iran war, have sidelined some would-be homebuyers. Pending home sales declined 1.2 percent year over year, and mortgage-purchase applications fell 3 percent week over week. The typical home spends 53 days on the market before going under contract, five days longer than last year.”

The monthly mortgage payment is rising amid a housing market that is skewing in favor of buyers.

According to the brokerage, there are 630,000 more home sellers in the market than buyers, the largest such gap since 2013.

Much of the home activity in the United States typically occurs between March and October of a year, real estate marketplace Zillow said in an April 1 report. For this year, the Iran war and the resulting oil shock have impacted the housing market.

It has been more than a month since U.S. and Israeli forces first launched coordinated strikes against Iran on Feb. 28.

Negotiations between Washington and Tehran have not produced any meaningful progress. If no breakthrough is achieved in getting Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas is shipped, President Donald Trump could order an escalation.

Such a development could further affect mortgage rates and the housing market.

“Higher mortgage rates have undone about a third of this year’s affordability gains,” Zillow said. “The impact on the housing market depends on how long the rate shock lasts.”

“If the situation resolves quickly, it’ll be early enough in the home shopping season for catch-up activity, and transactions might be higher than our modeled scenarios. The longer it takes for the rate shock to resolve, the more likely transactions would be delayed to next season.”

The Trump administration has taken steps to ease the country’s tight housing situation, with the president signing two executive orders on March 13.

The “Promoting Access to Mortgage Credit” order seeks to mitigate the impact of compliance costs arising from legislative actions of the past two decades, which it said have contributed to a “significant decline in bank participation in mortgage lending.”

The second order, targeting federal home construction regulations, seeks to reduce regulatory barriers to home building, with Trump noting that “layers of unnecessary” red tape were restricting supply and pushing up housing costs.