Guest Author:
Bob Chiodo
Equity Home Mortgage, LLC
* Rates
- 30 year conforming 6.125
- 30 year jumbo 6.625
- 7 yr ARM jumbo 5.75
- OR VA 5.375
I apologize for another late Oregon Financing Update, but I just returned from a two-week vacation in Italy with my son. A high school graduation and college send off gift for him (and me). Time sure flies by. Wasn’t it just yesterday when he entered school? I’ll talk a little more about the trip in future updates, but we had a great time.
I am almost caught up on my emails and all of the analyst reports that I receive. Looks like over the last two weeks the market’s volatility remained intact. Interest rates benefited from the drop in stock prices. The analysts call these “safe haven” moves. When stock prices are dropping, traders sell stocks and buy bonds with the proceeds thus helping to drop the rates. One report suggested that if the stock market recovers, interest rates would jump by a 1/4 of a percent. Personally, I don’t think another 1/4 or even 1/2 of a percent increase in rates will hurt our market. From a historical perspective, rates would still be quite low. There are signs that the housing market is strengthening and that the bottom might have passed. There are some very good buys in real estate today and we are starting to see some savvy buyers and investors enter the market. We still have a ways to go though to work through the inventory levels and foreclosures.
The Fed met last week and didn’t change the rates – that’s what the market anticipated. All are curious as to when they will start increasing the rates. There’s a lot of opinion as to whether they should increase rates or not. Increasing rates will help strengthen the dollar and help to ease the price pressure on oil and commodities, yet it could hurt employment and our business, in particular. This topic can be a very confusing and complex issue. Since I don’t have any input with Mr. Bernanke, we’ll just wait to see what he and the Fed does.
I hope everyone has a great and safe 4th of July. I’ll tell you this, you can a great appreciation for our country (especially the Pacific Northwest) when you spend some time outside of it.
*Rates quoted are for the use of Realtors and others in the real estate/financial service industries. They are not meant to be a quote for an individual situation. Rates change daily and those above are only listed to assist market participants by keeping them informed for current interest rates. Quotes are usually shown for a 30-day lock period and a 1% origination or discount fee.
ALL ABOUT…..Portland.Oregon.Real Estate by Betty Jung is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a Blog at WordPress.
(For more local and national real estate information, go to www.bettyjung.com).
Betty Jung
No comments yet
Comments feed for this article