Daily Archives: February 4, 2012

Mortgage rates took a turn for the better this week and plummeted down to new record lows. The 30-year fixed rate fell to 4.12%, the 15-year fixed rate dropped to 3.34%, and the 5-year adjustable rate lowered to 3.02%. The main reason the rates dropped so low is from the Fed’s announcement last week to keep key federal funds rate near zero until late 2014. The European debt crisis and the slow U.S. economy are other reasons as to why rates dropped.

President Obama made a speech in Falls Church, VA on Wednesday, February 1st, about the poor housing market. He wants to help struggling homeowners refinance. Since the HARP and HARP 2.0 programs are only for mortgages that are owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac he is proposing an additional program. This program will allow homeowners to refinance through FHA-insured loans, if Congress passes it. The program would call for lenders to be charged a fee to help fund it. Also the president stated that he wants to condense the mortgage application to one page by removing all of the legal information that homeowners and buyers may not understand, by doing this the application becomes simpler.

This would be a great program that homeowners and the economy could both benefit from. Now homeowners just have to wait to see if Congress will pass this program and hope that if they do mortgage rates will still be low. With the drop in mortgage rates this week we can see that they are volatile and there is no predicting what they will do next.

See more information on Staten Island real estate.