Under One Roof Blog
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Fed Has Pushed Mortgage Rates Lower, But 5% Looks Like Bottom
March 18, 2009 by Tamara Sevigny, Customer Care Director

The Federal Reserve’s efforts to lower mortgage rates, generally considered successful on Wall Street and in the central bank’s own corridors, may have hit a wall as a surge in refinancing has discouraged lenders from lowering rates even more.

Benchmark mortgage rates, which have fallen nearly 1 percentage point since late November to a little over 5%, according to Freddie Mac’s survey of 30-year conventional mortgages, are likely to range between about 5% and 5.25% for the next several months, say some analysts.

That’s low by historical standards, and a sharp drop from November’s levels before the Fed intervened directly in the mortgage market. But it’s higher than the 4.5% level that some analysts said late year was what was needed to ease U.S. housing woes and well above the 2% rate that is what some troubled borrowers may be able to negotiate under the government’s mortgage-modification guidelines.

For the full article, please click on the following link: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200903181244DOWJONESDJONLINE000779FORTUNE5.htm

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 10:58 am and is filed under Mortgage Loan Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.