If you took out a mortgage in November instead of October, you saved yourself enough money to buy a couple of tanks of gas, or three streaming subscriptions every month.

The average monthly mortgage payment to purchase a house in November fell to $2,137 from $2,199, a decrease of $62 driven by falling mortgage rates, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday. Although the 2.8% drop in payments isn’t a massive change, it’s a step in the right direction for first-time buyers who have found themselves priced out of the housing market by record-high home prices and mortgage rates that are close to their highest in decades.

“Homebuyer affordability improved in November, with a decline in mortgage rates providing relief to prospective homebuyers,” Edward Seiler, associate vice president for housing economics, at the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a prepared statement. “MBA expects that affordability conditions will continue to improve as mortgage rates decline, which should generate increased demand heading into the spring homebuying season.”

Housing experts expect mortgage rates to continue to fall next year as the Federal Reserve backs off its campaign of anti-inflation interest rate hikes, which drove the average rate offered for a 30-year mortgage to almost 8% at the end of October as measured by Freddie Mac. Since then, the average rate has tumbled from its highest since 2000 to 6.95% as of last week.

There’s another factor helping out homebuyers: Steady wage increases, thanks to a booming labor market, have given would-be buyers more purchasing power. The MBA’s home affordability index, which takes average pay into account, rose to its highest since February last month.

Those low mortgage rates have encouraged more homebuying and have helped real estate sales bounce back from their dismally low levels in November, a separate report Wednesday by the National Association of Realtors showed.