“Adversity is something that young mortgage professionals have really never seen”

However, she didn’t see the Fed’s latest shift negatively affecting the overall real estate market. “[Consumers might have to] go to Starbucks less often, but the real estate market was doing well when rates were at 3.625% and will do so again.”

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Cohn, who is currently the top originator at her company, encouraged would-be homeowners to capitalize on the current low rates, and that even if they waited to apply for a mortgage, they could opt for ARMs, which are set below market rates.

One of her biggest concerns, however, was the Omicron COVID variant and its possible impact on the real estate sector, pointing out that scrapping plans to get workers to return to the office could have a knock-on effect on house buying intentions in big cities, as was the case during the 2020 lockdown.

“If you’re not going to go back to work in your office, do you really want to live in the city? I think that Omicron is an ugly reminder that this pandemic is not going away so quickly, and that we can’t just put it behind us and pretend that it’s gone. We need to be mindful of it,” she said.