High interest rates adversely affect consumers, businesses
Homebuyers, entrepreneurs and public officials are confronting a new reality: If they want to hold off on big purchases or investments until borrowing is less expensive, it's probably going to be a long wait.
Governments are paying more to borrow money for new schools and parks. Developers are struggling to find loans to buy lots and build homes. Companies, forced to refinance debts at sharply higher interest rates, are more likely to lay off employees — especially if they were already operating with little or no profit.
Over the past few weeks, investors have realized that even with the Federal Reserve nearing an end to its increases in short-term interest rates, market-based measures of long-term borrowing costs have continued rising. In short, the economy may no longer be able to avoid a sharper slowdown.
“It's a trickle-down effect for everyone,” said Mary Kay Bates, CEO of Bank Midwest in Spirit Lake, Iowa.
Small banks like Bates' are at the epicenter of America's credit crunch for small businesses. During the pandemic, with the Fed's benchmark interest rate near zero and consumers piling up savings in bank accounts, she could make loans at 3% to 4%. She also put money into safe securities, like government bonds.
But when the Fed's rate started rocketing up, the value of Bank Midwest's securities portfolio fell — meaning that if Bates sold the bonds to fund more loans, she would have to take a steep loss. Deposits were also waning, as consumers spent down their savings and moved money into higher-yielding assets.
As a result, Bates is making loans by borrowing money from the Fed and other banks. She is also paying customers higher rates on deposits.
For all those reasons, Bates is charging borrowers higher rates and being careful about who she lends to.
“We're not looking at rates coming down any time soon,” she said. “I really see us taking a close watch and an internal focus, not so much on innovating and getting into new markets but taking care of the bank we have.”
On the other side of that equation are people like Liz Field, who started a bakery, the Cheesecakery, out of her home in Cincinnati.
She gradually built her business up through catering and mobile food trucks until 2019, when she borrowed $30,000 to open a cafe.
In 2021, Field was ready for the next step: buying a property, including a building
to use as a commissary kitchen. She got a loan for $434,000, backed by the Small Business Administration, with an interest rate of 5.5% and a monthly payment of $2,400.
But in the second half of 2022, the payments started increasing. Field realized that her interest was pegged to the “prime rate,” which moves up and down with the rate the Fed controls.
Because of that, her monthly payments have climbed to $4,120.
Along with slowing cheesecake orders, she has been forced to cut her 25 employees' hours, and sell one food truck and a freezer van.
“That really hurts, because I could have one to two shops for that price,” Field said about her payments.
According to analysts from Goldman Sachs, interest payments for small businesses will on average rise to about 7% of revenues next year, from 5.8% in 2021. No one is sure when businesses may get some relief — though if the economy slows sharply enough, rates are likely to sink on their own.
In September, the central bank held its rate steady but signaled that the rate would stay high for longer than the market had anticipated. For many businesses, that has required changes.
“We've been in this environment where the best strategy has been to just hold your breath and wait for the cost of capital to come back down,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at consulting firm EY-Parthenon. “What we're starting to see is business leaders, and to some extent consumers as well, realize that they have to start swimming.”
For large businesses, that means making investments that are likely to pay off quickly, rather than spending on speculative bets. For startups, which proliferated over the last few years, the concern is about the survival or failure of their businesses.
Most entrepreneurs use their savings and help from friends and family to start businesses; only about 10% rely on bank loans. Luke Pardue, an economist at smallbusiness payroll provider Gusto, said the pandemic generation of new firms tended to have an advantage because they had lower costs and used models that catered to hybrid work.
But the high cost and scarcity of capital could prevent them from growing — especially when their owners don't have wealthy investors or homes to borrow against.
“We spent three years patting ourselves on the back seeing this surge in entrepreneurship among women and people of color,” Pardue said. “Now when the rubber meets the road and they start to struggle, we need to enter the next phase of that conversation, which is how we can support these new businesses.”
The stubbornly high cost of capital also hurts businesses that need it to build homes — when mortgage rates above 7% have put buying homes out of reach for many people.
Residential construction activity has taken a hit over the past year, with employment in the industry flattening out as interest rates suppressed home sales. Builders that secured financing before rates increased are offering discounts to get units sold or leased, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
The real problem may arrive in a couple of years, when a new generation of renters begins searching for properties that never got built because of borrowing costs.
Dave Rippe is a former head of economic development for Nebraska who now spends some of his time rehabilitating old buildings in Hastings, a town of 25,000 people near the Kansas border, into apartments and retail spaces.
That was easier two years ago, when interest rates were half what they are now, even though material costs were higher.
“If you go around and talk to developers about `Hey, what's your next project?' it's crickets,” Rippe said.