According to CoinMeta, mortgage loan rates in the United States have risen for the first time in three weeks, with the average rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages increasing slightly from 6.65% the previous week to 6.66%, higher than 6.56% a year ago. Since the beginning of this year, the U.S. real estate market has been sluggish. Mortgage loan rates briefly fell below 6% before the conflict in the Middle East erupted at the end of February, but have remained above 6.5% since July, with no sign of a decline in financing costs. Thomas Ryan, a senior economist at Capital Economics Macroeconomics North America, said that high interest rates are still putting the market in a stalemate. If rates eventually drop to around 5%, pent-up demand could be significantly released, but it is not clear what factors could drive rates down to that level in the short term. In July, new home sales in the U.S. dropped to a six-month low, with signed sales of newly built single-family homes falling by 10.5%, equivalent to an annual rate of 607,000 units, which is lower than the market's expectation of 620,000 units.