World War II veteran Robert Persichitti dies at 102 while traveling to France for D-Day’s 80th anniversary

Persichitti fell ill last week during a stop in Germany while headed for Normandy, Al DeCarlo, a friend who was traveling with Persichitti, told CNN affiliate WHAM. Persichitti was airlifted to the hospital and died soon after, DeCarlo said.

“The doctor was with him. He was not alone, he was at peace and he was comfortable,” DeCarlo said. “She put his favorite singer, Frank Sinatra, on her phone and he peacefully left us.”

Mortgage rates at 3% were an ‘anomaly.’ Here’s what a normal 30-year rate looks like.

Home buyers are frustrated by 7% mortgage rates. One economist suggests that they’ll need to get used to them.

Since the Federal Reserve started hiking interest rates in mid-2022, mortgage rates have doubled, surpassing 7%.

Higher mortgage rates have resulted in significantly higher monthly mortgage payments and made buying a home harder to afford. At a rate of 7%, the median monthly mortgage payment for a $392,200 home is roughly $2,800, near a record high, according to a Redfin analysis. At a rate of 3%, that monthly payment would be close to $1,800.

Yet if one takes a longer view of the U.S. economy and mortgage-rate trends, the data clearly show that the 30-year rate is nowhere near its peak. In the 1980s, that rate went up to 18%, more than double where it was as of early June 2024. 

In fact, based on historical averages, mortgage rates are closer to a “normal” rate now than they were during the pandemic, Doug Duncan, chief economist at Fannie Mae told MarketWatch in an interview. 

Between 1950 and 2000, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged roughly 6%, Duncan said. But during the pandemic — due to the Fed’s actions in easing monetary policy to support the U.S. economy amid widespread closures of businesses and other shutdowns — the 30-year mortgage rate fell as low as 2%. Many borrowers snapped that up.

So “a 6% mortgage rate is not unusual historically,” Duncan said. “It’s just that people saw these 3% mortgage rates and got spoiled. But that’s a historical anomaly. … Unless there’s some catastrophic economic event for the broader economy, we wouldn’t expect to see mortgage rates back at 3% in our lifetimes.”