Why isn't the housing market behaving the way it's supposed to?

When the Federal Reserve kicked off its rate-hiking campaign in March last year, the housing market responded predictably - mortgage rates climbed, leading to eventual declines in home prices.

But after 10 rate hikes, the housing market - traditionally one of the most interest-rate-sensitive areas of the economy - is anything but predictable.

"It's creating a lot of confusion," said Orphe Divounguy, a senior economist at Zillow.

The Fed has raised its benchmark interest rate by five percentage points since last March to help lower inflation, which was at a 40-year high.

When the Fed raises interest rates, that increases the rates that banks charge each other for overnight loans. Banks and other financial institutions pass on the higher cost of borrowing to consumers by charging them higher rates on mortgages, credit cards, auto loans and other loans. In theory, consumers respond to this by cutting back on spending, which means businesses can't raise prices as much as they had.

Before the Fed announced its first rate hike on March 16, 2022, average 30-year fixed mortgage rates hadn't gone above 4% since May 2019, according to data from Freddie Mac. Rates began to increase in anticipation of the Fed's decision to raise rates and climbed even higher to 4.42% immediately after the first hike. Mortgage rates then continued to climb in tandem with the Fed's hikes until November, when mortgage rates peaked at 7.08%, despite four subsequent rate hikes since then.

Mortgage rates have been moving higher recently, after weeks of declines. For the week ending July 6, mortgage rates hit 6.81%, the highest level for the year so far, Freddie Mac reported on Thursday.