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Investing

Mortgage Rates At All-Time Low

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Mortgage rates hit all-time lows again last week. And, unemployment has improved. Neither of these has triggered an improvement in the housing market based on data from firms which include Case-Shiller, RealtyTrac, and Zillow.

But, one of the enemies of a home price recovery would be a rise in mortgage rates. The trend of the last years shows this would be unlikely.

According to Freddie Mac, its

Primary Mortgage Market Survey showed The 30-year fixed remained unchanged and at its all-time record low. One year ago at this time, the 30-year fixed averaged 5.05 percent.

Two things could affect this. One is the rate the Federal Reserve charges banks. The Fed says it has no plans to change the rate until well into 2014. The other is an unexpected surge in home sales. There is no evidence that will happen in the forecastle future.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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