Holiday season marked by record low interest rates

by KERRI PANCHUK

Mortgage rates remain near all-time lows with the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage setting a new record with an interest rate of 3.91%, Freddie Mac said Thursday. That's down from 3.94% a week ago.

Meanwhile, the 15-year, FRM remained at 3.21%, and the 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 2.85% this week, down from 2.86% last week.

Freddie Mac also reported that the 1-year Treasury-indexed ARM averaged 2.77%, down from 2.81% last week.

Freddie Mac concluded the 30-year, FRM and adjustable-rate products reached new all-time lows in this week's rate survey.

"Rates on 30-year fixed mortgages have been at or below 4 percent for the last eight weeks and now are almost 0.9 percentage points below where they were at the beginning of the year, which means that today’s homebuyers are paying over $1,200 less per year on a $200,000 loan," said Frank Nothaft, vice president and chief economist of Freddie Mac. "This greater affordability helped push existing home sales higher for the second consecutive month in November to an annualized pace of 4.42 million, the most since January."

On the same day, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said the national average contract mortgage rate hit 4.22% in November.

In addition, the average interest rate for a conventional, 30-year, FRM on loans of $417,000 or less increased 4-basis points last month to 4.40%. The contract rate on the composite of all mortgages, including fixed and adjustable rate mortgages, hit 4.20% in November, up 3 basis points from 4.17%.

URL to original article: http://www.housingwire.com/2011/12/22/holiday-season-marked-by-record-low-interest-rates-2

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