If you took out a mortgage in November instead of October, you saved yourself enough money to buy a couple of tanks of gas, or three streaming subscriptions every month.

The average monthly mortgage payment to purchase a house in November fell to $2,137 from $2,199, a decrease of $62 driven by falling mortgage rates, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday. Although the 2.8% drop in payments isn’t a massive change, it’s a step in the right direction for first-time buyers who have found themselves priced out of the housing market by record-high home prices and mortgage rates that are close to their highest in decades.

“Homebuyer affordability improved in November, with a decline in mortgage rates providing relief to prospective homebuyers,” Edward Seiler, associate vice president for housing economics, at ܫthe Mortgage Bankers Association said in a prepared statement. “MBA expects that affordability conditions will continue to improve as mortgage rates decline, w💛hich should generate increased demand heading into the spring homebuying season.”

Housing experts 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果꧋体彩网:expect mortgaღge rates to continue to fall next year as the Federal Reserve backs off its campaign of anti-inflation interest rate hikes, which drove the average rate offered for a 30-year mortgage to almost 8% at the end of October as measured by Freddie Mac. Since then, the average rate has tumbled from its highest since 2000 to 6.95% as of last week.

There’s another factor helping out homebuyers: S澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:teady wage increases, 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:thanks to a booming labor market, have given would-be buyers more purchasing power. The MBA’s home affordability index, which takes average pay into account, rose to its highest since February last month.

Those low mortgage rates have 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:encouraged more homebuying and have helped real estate sales bounce back from their dismally low levels in November, a separate report Wednesday by the National Association of Realtors showed.