Long-term mortgage rates continued their historic slide this week, with the 30-year fixed rate slipping to 4.36 percent from last week’s 4.42 percent, according to Freddie Mac.
The 15-year fixed set a new low as well: 3.86 percent, down from 3.90 percent last week.
This marks the ninth straight week of new lows for either or both long-term rates as new and existing home sales set records of their own in reports released this week. Existing home sales plunged 27 percent in July; new home sales fell 12 percent to a record low.
The housing market reports “led to some market concerns that the housing market may slow the economic recovery,” said Amy Crews Cutts, deputy chief economist, Freddie Mac. “As a result, long-term bond yields fell to the lowest levels since January 2009, allowing fixed mortgage rates to ease to new record lows this week.”
Much of the slowdown in sales, Cutts said, was anticipated after the recently expired homebuyer tax programs, which siphoned future home purchases into the first half of the year.
“For instance, average existing home sales over the first seven months of 2010 were nearly 8 percent higher than over the same period a year ago,” Cutts said. .
The economist also said that house prices appear to be stabilizing. Nationally, house prices rose 0.9 percent on a seasonally-adjusted basis during the second quarter of this year this year after 11 consecutive quarterly declines, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s purchase-only index.
Last year at this time, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.14 percent.
Freddie Mac’s 30-year fixed-rate survey began in 1971, while the 15-year began in 1991.
