Mortgage Rates Fall And Other Real Estate News

(News about the housing market, mortgages and the overall health of the economy has been pouring in lately, all with mixed reviews. )

It seems pretty safe to say that no one really even knows what is going on.

One thing is for sure though, and that is the mortgage rates have fallen again this week, which is good news considering our overall status.

A November 30, 2006 article by Bankrate.com’s Holden Lewis, “Mortgage rates fall to 10-month low,” discusses how mortgage rates have fallen as well as some other interesting news about the housing market and economy.

“Trying to make sense of today's economy is like trying to discern meaning in the shapes of the ever-shifting clouds. Which is another way of saying that mortgage rates fell again this week, but they conceivably could have gone up.”

Falling mortgage rates are good news for homeowners who want to refinance as well as people with adjustable-rate mortgages.

Basically, it is good news for pretty much everyone, which is something that homeowners love to hear in today’s marketplace.

“The benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell for the fifth week in a row, this time by 5 basis points, to 6.17 percent, according to the Bankrate.com national survey of large lenders. A basis point is one-hundredth of 1 percentage point. The mortgages in this week's survey had an average total of 0.3 discount and origination points.”

As for the housing market, the American public has been getting a lot of interesting facts, figures and information in terms of what is going on with the market.

“A lot of economic data arrived in the last week, and it presented a mixed picture. Existing home sales rose in October when compared to September, but plunged 11.5 percent when compared to the previous October. There was a 7.4-month supply of houses for resale, which is a sign of a buyer's market.”

“More to the point, half of the houses and condos resold in October cost more than $221,000, compared to $229,000 in October 2005. That's a 3.5 percent decline in the median price.”

What this seems to mean is that some sellers are finally giving in to the buyers who have been waiting on the sidelines.

“The National Association of Realtors' president, Pat Vredevoogd Combs, said, ‘Sellers are cutting their price enough to encourage sales.’ An ice cream shop does the same thing during a power outage in July, and it's equally a sign of desperation.”

Almost half of all home builders are also cutting prices across the country, or offering some sort of non-price sales incentive, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

But in other confusing news, “Home prices rising ... sort of,” the government reported that sales of new houses fell in October, but the median price was 1.9 percent higher than a year earlier.”

Hopefully things will begin to make more sense as the housing market corrects itself.

Back to Articles