Tracy Kidder’s classic 1985 book House follows a Massachusetts couple that has decided to build their dream home. To get the money for the structure itself—not including the land—they must borrow $100,000 at 13 percent interest. It’s a burden that gives the imagined house the special, binding weight of debt. If they pay it off within ten years, they will have wound up giving the bank $80,000 more than they borrowed. If it takes 30 years, the interest on the principal will amount to $300,000. Double-digit interest rates on 30-year mortgages lasted all through the 1980s, and helped prompt the first decline in U.S. homeownership since the Great Depression, the success story in House notwithstanding.

Now, after a decade of cheap money, high interest rates are back. Relatively speaking: Last week, the interest on the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hit 6.29 percent, its highest point since 2008. What’s striking is the rate of change: This time last year, the 30-year mortgage rate was 2.88 percent. The cost of borrowing has nearly tripled in 12 months.

There’s no mystery why: the Federal Reserve has been hiking interest rates in an attempt to crush inflation.

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