Twin Cities Real Estate Blog

In the last two weeks we’ve seen interest rates on 30 year fixed mortgages move from 4.5% to 5.5% (or higher) that’s a big OUCH.  This full interest rate point swing has meant that almost overnight, buyers lost well over 10% of their buying power.  Another way to look at it is housing just got [...]

I love data… be it hard numbers, graphs, charts, tables, interpretation, etc.  I’ve come up with another concept of tracking overall affordability: combining cost per finished square foot with mortgage rates to give an overall cost of financing each square foot of house over the last few years (I only had data back to 2002):

This [...]

After Tuesday’s Federal Reserve interest rate cut, mortgage rates dropped more than I thought possible just two weeks ago.  I had a buyer lock in a 30 year fixed rate at 4.75%!  That is simply unbelievable…
With rates having dropped from 6.25% a few months ago to 4.75% – 5% today, buyers with a loan amount [...]

Just released from MAAR:
The Housing Affordability Index (HAI)�shot up 19 points to 180 thanks to the recent healthy declines in mortgage interest rates and a continued softening in home prices; the HAI has not been this attractive since we began tracking data in 1990.

What This Means to You
The dramatic fall in interest rates in recent [...]

On Friday my loan officers were quoting rates on 30yr fixed mortgages in the 5.5% – 6% range again… which is down more than .5% from just a couple weeks ago.  On a $200,000 house, that means a monthly payment that is more than $80 less than it was just 2 weeks before.  Or in [...]

As the news about a slowing economy and fears of recession mount, the stock market has taken a huge hit, falling double-digit percentages in the last couple months, but housing is benefitting.
 As money has been taken out of stocks, it has been flowing into bonds, which are historically a very safe investment.  When demand for [...]

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been seeing rates on 30-year fixed mortgages fall substantially… I’ve seen some recent quotes for 5.5%!
When you look at a straight affordability perspective, taking 1/2% off the interest rate (which is what has happened in the last few weeks) on a $200,000 loan saves you $1000 per year in [...]