WASHINGTON – Rates on 30-year and 15-year mortgages declined for the second week in a row, offering more good news for the red-hot housing market.
For the week ending Dec. 19, the average rate on 30-year mortgages slid to 5.82 percent, down from 5.88 percent the previous week, Freddie Mac, the mortgage giant, reported Thursday in its weekly nationwide survey of mortgage rates.
Rates on 30-year mortgages dropped to 5.21 percent, the lowest level in more than four decades, in the middle of June. Since then, rates on these benchmark mortgages have bounced up and down.
For 15-year mortgages, a popular option for refinancing, rates fell to 5.14 percent this week, down sharply from 5.24 percent last week.
Rates for one-year adjustable mortgages, meanwhile, averaged 3.77 percent, unchanged from the previous week. It marked the fourth straight week that rates on one-year ARMs held steady.
A year ago, rates on 30-year mortgages averaged 6.03 percent, 15-year mortgages were 5.42 percent and one-year adjustable mortgages stood at 4.07 percent.
The nationwide averages for mortgage rates do not include add-on fees known as points. Thirty-year and 15-year mortgages each carried an average fee of 0.7 point this week. One-year ARMs carried an average fee of 0.6 point.
“With no inflationary pressure, mortgage rates have continued to slip for the past few weeks and we expect to see no big change in rates anytime in the foreseeable future,” said Freddie Mac’s chief economist, Frank Nothaft.
Economists predict home sales will set a record high this year and probably will post the second-best year ever in 2004.
The housing market has been the economy’s bright spot through hard economic times as well as during the recovery. The sector’s strength contributed to the economy growing at a blistering 8.2 percent rate in the third quarter, the best performance in nearly two decades.
Separately, the Mortgage Bankers Association of America said refinancing accounted for 51.8 percent of all home-mortgage applications filed last week, up from 49.4 percent the previous week.
Michael Wyman has joined the Alderwood office of Windermere Real Estate as a sales associate. A former owner of Benchmark Home Inspection Service Inc., Wyman has 13 years of experience in the inspection industry.
Agents and staff at the Lynnwood real estate office of John L. Scott collected money for gifts for about 100 soldiers in Iraq. They gifts were taken to Fort Lewis for delivery to the troops before Christmas.
Send your real estate news items to Mike Benbow, Business editor, The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206, by fax at 425-339-3435, or by e-mail at economy@heraldnet.com.
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