Those who have been priced out of the housing market because of sky-high mortgage rates have been watching the Federal Reserve's policy on interest rates like hawks this year. While the Fed doesn't directly control mortgage rates, raising or lowering the Federal Funds Rate (FFR) indirectly impacts them. The FFR is the rate at which banks lend excess reserves overnight to one another, and movements up and down cause similar movements in Treasury note yields used by banks to set loan rates, including mortga ...