Courtesy of Doug Short
The Freddie Mac weekly update on mortgage rates is out today. The 5.00% is a fractional decline from last week’s 5.05%. The first chart features an overlay of the 30-year fixed rate (excluding points) and core inflation based on the Consumer Price Index since 2007. In light of the ongoing crisis in residential real estate, the rate increase since early November is not helpful and presumably wasn’t the anticipated effect of the Fed’s second round of quantitative easing.
Here is a long-term view of the complete data series from Freddie Mac, which dates from 1971. The rate increases of late seem minor in the larger context. But the impact on today’s devastated housing market is enormous.
