Writer, editor, dog lover
Good news, house hunters: Home prices have started to cool. Prices are still rising, but annual home price appreciation slowed from April to June, with June marking the strongest single-month deceleration in home price growth ever, according to Black Knight, a mortgage data analytics firm.
The bad news: Rising mortgage rates are making homeownership less attainable for some buyers.
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Mortgage rates keep falling. Freddie Mac’s widely quoted Primary Mortgage Market Survey put rates at 2.86%, the lowest rate since the company began tracking mortgage rates in 1971. Yet, some experts say refinancing right now doesn’t make sense for every homeowner. What are the questions every homeowner needs to ask to determine whether now is the right time to refinance?
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Mortgage lenders began to tighten their purse strings when the coronavirus crisis hit the U.S. earlier this year, raising requirements for all borrowers and for those taking out large home loans in particular.
Mortgages that are too large to be purchased by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the government sponsored enterprises that buy home loans, are known as jumbo loans. Across most of the country, a mortgage larger than $510,400 is considered non-conforming and fits in the jumbo bucket, though in some expensive markets the jumbo loan limits is as high as $765,600.
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My mortgage payments are by far my largest monthly expense, so when I recently got the chance to cut them, I cut them as deeply as I could — even though it meant doing something I never thought I’d do: Forgoing the security of a fixed-rate mortgage for an adjustable one.
An ARM, also known as a “variable-rate mortgage,” offers a low introductory interest rate—typically for three, five, seven or 10 years—and when that period ends the rate turns into a floating rate for the remainder of the loan. Once rates adjust, mortgage payments for an ARM can double or even triple. With today’s mortgage rates at or near record lows, future rates may have only one way to go: up.
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It’s no secret mortgages are cheap right now. For some borrowers they’re hitting levels many experts might have thought impossible just a few months ago. Welcome to the world of the sub-3% mortgage.
The 30-year fixed-rate average sank last week to 3.15% with an average 0.8 percentage points paid, according to Freddie Mac. That’s the lowest level recorded since the mortgage giant began tracking mortgage rates in 1971. But 3.15% is just the average rate—some buyers and refinancers are qualifying for rates below 3%, something even mortgage pros are seeing for the first time.
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Daniel Bortz 