The Federal Reserve has snapped up $1 trillion of mortgage bonds since March, a record pace of purchasing, as the U.S. central bank tries to blunt the impact of the Covid-19 recession on American homeowners.
The Fed bought around $300 billion of the bonds in each of March and April, and since then has been buying about $100 billion a month. It now owns almost a third of bonds backed by home loans in the U.S. Buying the securities has pushed mortgage rates lower, with the average 30-year rate falling to 2.91% as of last week from 3.3% in early February.
