By Ben Casselman

Economics Reporter

Good morning. The increasing cost of living means that many homeowners in the U.S. can’t leave their homes and some in Britain may not be able to stay in theirs.

Quadruple whammy

Economic policymakers around the world are raising interest rates to try to tame the rising cost of living. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, reiterated his commitment to that policy in a speech yesterday. He warned against giving up on inflation “prematurely” and promised to “stay the course until the job is done.”

But both rising rates and high inflation can have very different practical effects depending on who you are and where you live. Gas prices matter much more to people who commute long distances to work, for example. Higher interest rates are costly to people who rely on credit cards to pay their bills, while they can actually be good news for retirees living off savings.

In today’s newsletter, I want to explore a striking example of those differences: the housing market on either side of the Atlantic. In Britain, rising rates are threatening to force some people out of their homes. In the United States, they are in some cases preventing people from moving.

Two countries, two outcomes

At the beginning of this year, the typical U.S. home buyer could get a mortgage with an interest rate of just over 3 percent, low by historical standards. Today, buyers can expect to pay more than twice that in interest — more than 6.5 percent on average, the highest rate in over a decade. To put that in concrete terms, for someone buying a $300,000 home with a 20 percent down payment, that’s the difference between a monthly mortgage payment of $1,000 and a payment of more than $1,500.

If you own a home in the United States, though, chances are your monthly payment hasn’t gone up at all. That’s because a vast majority of homes in this country are bought using 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages. If you locked in a rate of 3 percent last year, your monthly payment will stay the same for the next three decades, no matter what happens with interest rates, home prices or overall inflation.

In Britain, mortgage rates have also risen rapidly. But the impact of higher rates looks very different. That’s because most mortgages there have fixed rates for only two to five years. (Others have variable rate mortgages that automatically change whenever the Bank of England raises or lowers interest rates.) As my colleague Eshe Nelson reported recently, millions of Britons expect their interest rates to jump up over the next year. Inevitably, some of them won’t be able to afford the resulting higher payments, and will be forced to leave their homes.

Winners and losers

There’s no question that, for most U.S. homeowners, the stability that their fixed-rate mortgages provides is a huge benefit right now, effectively insulating them from both the effects of high inflation and rising mortgage rates.

But not everyone comes out ahead. In the U.S., you can’t take your mortgage with you when you move to a new home. As a result, homeowners who might have been planning to relocate over the next few years — to trade up to a bigger house, for example, or to downsize after the kids head to college — now have a strong incentive to stay put and hold on to their low interest rate.

As a result, fewer people are listing their homes for sale, which in turn is keeping home prices high even as the housing market has slowed by other measures. That means that anyone hoping to buy a first home now faces a quadruple whammy: There aren’t many homes to buy. The homes that are available are expensive. Rising interest rates are sapping buyers’ power. And if they don’t buy, then they have to keep paying rent — which is also going up.

As Roman Sustek, an economist at Queen Mary University of London, put it to me: “In the U.S., you’re going to have winners — these are the guys with existing loans — and you’re going to have losers, who are the new borrowers. In the U.K., everyone is going to be a loser.”

These complex dynamics also have implications for the broader economy. The prevalence of fixed-rate mortgages in the U.S. means that the Fed can raise rates aggressively without worrying that millions of people will lose their homes. But it also dampens the effect of those rate increases: If U.S. homeowners were to face a sudden upturn in their housing costs, they’d be likely to pull back their purchases in other areas (something that is already starting to happen in Britain). Instead, many Americans can keep on spending, which could help keep inflation higher for longer.

More business news

• Powell said interest rate increases could slow as soon as December.
• Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the crypto exchange FTX, blamed “huge management failures” for its bankruptcy in an interview with The Times, his first public appearance since its crash.
• FTX’s collapse has rippled across industries, with consequences for A.I.
• Elon Musk hopes to test a brain implant in humans next year.

ADVERTISEMENT

THE LATEST NEWS

• House Democrats picked Hakeem Jeffries of New York as their leader for the next term, making him the first Black person to lead a party in Congress.
• President Biden is trying to smooth European anger over his preferential treatment for U.S. automakers during a White House visit by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
• The House passed legislation to avert a nationwide railways strike and to give their workers seven days of paid sick leave. Both measures now head to the Senate.
• A House committee has six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns, ending his long effort to keep them from lawmakers.
• Georgia Republicans are fretting about Herschel Walker’s prospects in the final days of the Senate runoff campaign.

• A cafe with two menus, one without heated food. An orchestra playing by battery-powered lanterns. This is life in Kyiv, where power and water are no longer guaranteed.
• Xi Jinping, China’s leader, is grappling with how to mourn his predecessor Jiang Zemin at a time of unrest.
• The French baguette was granted global preservation status by UNESCO as an item of “intangible cultural heritage.”

• The U.S. will give three Native tribes threatened by climate change $25 million each to move inland.
• New Yorkers expressed skepticism of Mayor Eric Adams’s plan to remove homeless people with mental illness from streets and subways.
• Indiana’s attorney general asked the state medical board to discipline a doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim.
• Jeffrey Epstein’s estate agreed to pay about $105 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands to settle claims he used the territory for sex trafficking.
• Using a quantum computer, researchers simulated a pair of black holes and sent a message between them through a wormhole.
• The San Francisco police may soon be permitted to deploy deadly robots.

Run from anyone who claims to know where China’s protests are headed next, Nicholas Kristof says.

Silicon Valley made big promises in Africa. It’s falling short, Ifeoma Ajunwa writes.

More of The Times, at a special rate.

Readers of The Morning can experience everything The New York Times offers with an All Access subscription. From News to Cooking, Games, product reviews from Wirecutter and now sports journalism from The Athletic, too — all together, for one rate.

MORNING READS

Epic journey: How cattle are exported from Australia to Indonesia.

Shannon Abloh: She is ready to talk after the death of her husband, Virgil.

Listen to “First Person”: Is this climate activist turned politician a savior or a sellout?

A Times classic: A college degree is still worth it.

Advice from Wirecutter: Guests but no guest room? Try these essentials.

Lives Lived: As a singer, songwriter and keyboardist, Christine McVie helped drive the phenomenal success of Fleetwood Mac, one of rock history’s most tumultuous and beloved bands. She died at 79. (Listen to 12 of her best songs.)

SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC

Blowout: Suns superstar Devin Booker scored 51 points in just three quarters of Phoenix’s win over the Bulls.

A new era: Rose Bowl officials agreed late last night to clear the way for a 12-team College Football Playoff in the 2024 season.

ADVERTISEMENT

WORLD CUP

Relief: Led by Lionel Messi, Argentina advanced with a 2-0 victory over Poland, which also qualified for the knockout round despite the loss.

Luxury boxes: V.I.P. isn’t exclusive enough. To get the best perks at the World Cup, you have to be a V.V.I.P.

New format? FIFA is considering penalty shootouts for group-stage games in the 2026 World Cup.

Louis van Gaal: Meet the Dutch coach on a mission to stop the U.S. this weekend.

Today’s matches: Croatia, Belgium, and Morocco play for two spots in the next round, starting at 10 a.m. Eastern. Here are the standings.

ARTS AND IDEAS

The best TV of the year

In the streaming TV era, many shows can feel familiar, an endless march of sequels and prequels. The shows on The Times’s best TV of 2022 list break out of that rut. Here’s a taste of each critic’s picks:

“Reservation Dogs” (FX on Hulu): In its second season, this series became weirder, funnier and more heartbreaking, as its Indigenous teens tried to grapple with loss and hang on to hope — or, if necessary, steal it. — James Poniewozik

“Landscapers” (HBO): Working from the bizarre-but-true story of a middle-aged British couple convicted, long after the fact, of murdering the wife’s parents, the brilliant young British director Will Sharpe turned out a show unlike anything else. — Mike Hale

“Derry Girls” (Netflix): Even though “Derry Girls” tips the scales at just 19 episodes, there was a lot to the show, both in terms of its enviable joke density and its ability to metabolize entrenched international conflict alongside swoony teen goings-on. — Margaret Lyons

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

These garlic noodles are simple — but they can be fancy, too.

Our travel guide to Rome helps you blend the ancient with the new.

In “Fit Nation,” Natalia Mehlman Petrzela charts how America became addicted to exercise.

Stephen Colbert is conflicted over a landmark Jan. 6 conviction.

The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were additional and dilation. Here is today’s puzzle.

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Take the wheel (five letters).

And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

P.S. The word “algorithmization” appeared for the first time in The Times recently, describing how Apple and Spotify are changing how people listen to hip-hop.

Here’s today’s front page.

“The Daily” is about the Oath Keepers trial verdict.

Matthew Cullen, Lauren Jackson, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.