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Mortgage Rates still Hold Steady
| Mortgage rates held even this week. For a recent history of rates we saw rates reach an all time low of 4.96 on January 15th. After that rates jumped up to 5.25 on February 5th. Since then rates have come down. 30 year rates are now at 5.07 so just a little above their previous lows. We have rates for the last 5 weeks listed below. Feb 26, 2009 30-yr 5.07 15-yr 4.68 5-yr ARM 5.06 1-yr ARM 4.81 Feb 19, 2009 30-yr 5.04 15-yr 4.68 5-yr ARM 5.04 1-yr ARM 4.80 Feb 12, 2009 30-yr 5.16 15-yr 4.81 5-yr ARM 5.23 1-yr ARM 4.94 Feb 05, 2009 30-yr 5.25 15-yr 4.92 5-yr ARM 5.26 1-yr ARM 4.92 Jan 29, 2009 30-yr 5.10 15-yr 4.80 5-yr ARM 5.27 1-yr ARM 4.90 This is the first time we have seen the 5 year ARM fall below the 30 year rate. At this point there is no real reason to get the 5 year ARM or the 1 year ARM since they are not that much lower than the 30 year rate to justify the risk of being stuck with a balloon payment in 1 or 5 years when rates are probably going to be much higher than what we see today. The difference between the 30 year rate and the 15 year rate has grown which makes the 15 year rate more appealing. On January 29th the different was .3 points (5.10 for the 30 year and 4.80 for the 15 year rate). Today the difference is .39 (5.07 for the 30 year and 4.68 for the 15 year rate). So the other big news with the mortgage industry is that banks are now allowing investors to have 10 loans. For a long time most banks limited investors to 4 loans. This drastically slowed down the investment market. Increasing the limit to 10 will probably allow the multifamily market to start moving a little faster as it has been one of the slowest segments of the market. In addition, to rates we wanted to look at mortgage payments. We used our mortgage calculator to determine the monthly payments based on today's rates. We did the same thing with rates from February 19th and January 29th. Feb 26 30-yr 1082.21 15-yr 1548.44 5-yr ARM 1080.98 1-yr ARM 1050.53 Jan 29 30-yr 1085.89 15-yr 1560.82 5-yr ARM 1106.88 1-yr ARM 1061.45 October 30th 30-yr 1258.87 15-yr 1708.31 5-yr ARM 1245.77 1-yr ARM 1120.56 All in all mortgage payments for the last month have been pretty steady. Back in October mortgage rates and payments where much higher. Moving forward I expect mortgage rates to move up over the next two years. The main question is how long they will stay at their current levels. |
About the Author
Ki lives and works in Austin Texas. His site has a free search of the Austin MLS. He also has a mortgage interest rates widget on his website as well as a free mortgage calculator widget.
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