Since peaking in February 2018, the relative affordability of new homes being sold in the United States has continued to improve through November 2018, the last month for which the data is available, where rising mortgage rates, falling new home sale prices, and rising incomes have combined to produce that outcome in the national-level data.
The following chart shows the history of interest rates for 30-year conventional fixed-rate mortgages in the U.S. from April 1971 through November 2018.
In November 2018, 30-year conventional mortgage rates peaked at 4.87%, the highest they've been since February 2011,