Prediction record
MisseconomyBy the end of Q1 2023, it will be impossible to get a US mortgage with a rate below 9%
A scored record for Peter Zeihan, made on .
Scored record
Misseconomy“by the end of the first quarter of next year it's going to be impossible to get one with less than a nine percent rate”
By the end of Q1 2023, it will be impossible to get a US mortgage with a rate below 9%
- Made on
- 2022-11-03
- Outcome
- Miss
- Importance
- 4 / 5
- Contribution
- -3.53
Criterion
- Resolution status
- resolved
- Resolved on
- 2023-03-31
By 2023-03-31, no standard US residential mortgage is obtainable at an interest rate below 9% (prevailing 30-yr rates ≥9%)
PREDICTION FALSE. The made-on claim (2022-11-03) asserted it would be 'impossible to get a US mortgage with a rate below 9%' by end of Q1 2023. Actual prevailing 30-year rates were in the 6%-7% range throughout Q1 2023 — roughly 2.3+ percentage points below the 9% threshold — and below-9% mortgages were freely available. The 30-year rate has never reached 9% in the post-2022 cycle. Resolution date set to the criterion deadline (2023-03-31). High confidence; the exact decimal of the late-March weekly value was not pinned but is immaterial since the entire quarter sat well under 9%. WebFetch of the live FRED/Freddie Mac pages returned 403/current-date data, so figures rely on Freddie Mac PMMS reporting summarized across multiple Freddie Mac news releases and FRED; recommend attaching the Freddie Mac historical weekly data file (historicalweeklydata.xlsx) as the definitive primary citation in a later verification pass.
Sources
Implications of Rising Interest Rates
YouTube ·
Outcome evidence
Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS), the standard US benchmark for the 30-year fixed rate, shows the rate began 2023 at 6.48% (week of Jan 5, 2023) and moved within the ~6.09%-6.73% band through Q1, ending the year near 7.03%. The 30-year rate did not reach or exceed 9% at any point in Q1 2023 (or anywhere in 2023); standard conforming mortgages were widely obtainable in the 6%-7% range. This directly falsifies the criterion that by 2023-03-31 no standard US residential mortgage would be obtainable below 9% (prevailing 30-yr rates >=9%).
FRED series MORTGAGE30US (St. Louis Fed, sourced from Freddie Mac PMMS) confirms weekly 30-year fixed averages in Q1 2023 ranged roughly 6.09%-6.73% (early-March peak ~6.65%-6.73%, declining to ~6.3%-6.4% by late March). All weekly values are far below 9%.
Corrections
No public corrections.
Score contribution
-3.53- Confidence
- 97%
- Outcome
- Miss
- Importance
- 4 / 5
- Contribution
- -3.53
This page displays the scored record as published; the website doesn't recompute or adjust the score.
Provenance
By the end of Q1 2023, it will be impossible to get a US mo…- Methodology version
- v1.0.0
- Last computed
- July 4, 2026
- Made on
- 2022-11-03
How this profile was built
Scored by independent judges
Predictions gathered and sourced
Independently verified against sources