A spokesperson for the local Realtor association says for under a million buyers can get a standard 3- or 4 bedroom house, a one-story ranch house, or a smaller 2- or 3- bedroom bungalow on State St. He also says home sales are rising all over the area largely due to lower interest rates, especially homes in the sub-million dollar range. Low rates can cause hesitant buyers to act. A good idea, since no one knows when rates will reach a low and start to climb. Once a trend begins toward higher sales begins, prices inevitably start to creep back up.
In a related story, Freddie Mac recently released the report from its Primary Mortgage Market Survey. The report cites the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgages as 5.07%, a .03% increase from last week, though still significantly lower than last year‘s average of 6.24% at this time. The 15 year fixed-rate average stayed the same this week at 4.68% as compared with last year when the average was 5.72%. 5-year Adjustable-Rate Mortgages came in at 5.06%, a .02% increase from last week. Last year’s ARM rates at this time averaged 5.43%. One-year ARMs are up slightly, 4.81% from 4.80%. Last year 1-year ARMs averaged 5.11%.
A chief Freddie Mac official said rates changed very little as varying reports of a slowing economy surfaced. The Producer Price, as well as the Consumer Price Indexes both rose higher than popular market consensus in January as consumer confidence was lower in February than at any time since such records have been kept.
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