Question: Will mortgage rates go back down?

[shevacc]

Personally I doubt it, unfortunately. There's practically nowhere for rates to go but up and as the Fed announced, they're starting to be more optimistic about economic recovery hence looking at raising rates eventually.

[Deleted]

No clue. They are at their highest today :-( :-( And Im STILL not under attorney review yet.

[niq]

If anyone knew the answer to this question, they would do something much more profitable with it than post it to MM...

[raangoli]

Jul 11, 2013 12:57:34 GMT -5 niq said:

If anyone knew the answer to this question, they would do something much more profitable with it than post it to MM...

Haha this is very true. But to answer the OP, no, I don't think so. I think they've hit their bottom and are on their way back up.

[Deleted]

Jul 11, 2013 13:34:21 GMT -5 kooshball said:

<5% is still low... I am amused at all these omg my life is over at 4.5%.

It makes a difference when you are given pre-approval based on 3.5%....

     

[karinothing]

Jul 11, 2013 13:34:57 GMT -5 @iheartcosmos said:

Jul 11, 2013 13:34:21 GMT -5 kooshball said:

<5% is still low... I am amused at all these omg my life is over at 4.5%.

It makes a difference when you are given pre-approval based on 3.5%....

     

Yeah, exactly. It adds an extra $300 to my payment. So, that is a big deal to me!

That being said, I think they will go down a bit, but not under 4%.

[Deleted]

Jul 11, 2013 13:56:33 GMT -5 kooshball said:

Jul 11, 2013 13:34:57 GMT -5 @iheartcosmos said:

It makes a difference when you are given pre-approval based on 3.5%....

     

Did they change your pre-approval max purchase due to the 1% change? 

no, because the house we are buying is $100K less than max, so it wasn't an issue. 

But it would have been if we decided to rent out instead of sell our current house. 

[Deleted]

Jul 11, 2013 14:45:12 GMT -5 jenny1980 said:

Jul 11, 2013 14:09:02 GMT -5 @iheartcosmos said:

no, because the house we are buying is $100K less than max, so it wasn't an issue. 

But it would have been if we decided to rent out instead of sell our current house. 

Well and even if it doesn't impact your purchasing power, it still changes your monthly financial picture.

I'm not going to fling myself off a bridge because we missed being able to refi at 3.5%, but I'm not going to act like losing a few hundred/month doesn't suck. That's a fun vacation/ year!

oh absolutely. We will wind up paying a few hundred more a month than we wanted to. Oh well.

STILL NO CONTRACT WTF ITS BEEN TWO DAYS

[Deleted]

Jul 11, 2013 14:48:33 GMT -5 @iheartcosmos said:

Jul 11, 2013 14:45:12 GMT -5 jenny1980 said:

Well and even if it doesn't impact your purchasing power, it still changes your monthly financial picture.

I'm not going to fling myself off a bridge because we missed being able to refi at 3.5%, but I'm not going to act like losing a few hundred/month doesn't suck. That's a fun vacation/ year!

oh absolutely. We will wind up paying a few hundred more a month than we wanted to. Oh well.

STILL NO CONTRACT WTF ITS BEEN TWO DAYS

Our current sellers waited 5 days to give us a signed contract and becuase of that we lost our 3.625% rate

[vegas]

We lost out on our lower rate yesterday and can't lock until tomorrow at the earliest, most likely Monday. I'm with everyone else. I understand that 5% is a historically low rate but when it was under 4% a few weeks ago it's frustrating to know you just missed out. It's several hundred dollars a month difference for us, so we aren't talking about pennies here.

[aurora]

Jul 11, 2013 13:34:21 GMT -5 kooshball said:

<5% is still low... I am amused at all these omg my life is over at 4.5%.

My life certainly isn't over and we're still going to close, but I can't see why you think it's so odd that I'd be disappointed our sellers first rejected our best and final and then changed their mind and accepted it 2 days later after rates had jumped more than 0.5%.  It's human nature to be disappointed when you were so close to paying hundreds less every month.

@iheartcosmos - I can't believe you're still in attorney review, but I hope it magically works out that rates drop just when you come out of it!

sxia - unfortunately I agree with the others that I doubt you're likely to see < 3.5% again.  I hope I'm wrong about a year from now and can refinance!

[niq]

I was going to post saying I'd be contrarian and that rates would either stay flat or drop a little, but then (a) karinothing beat me to it, and (b) Bernanke opened his mouth today and I think bond traders got the message.

Smartest guys in the room my ass...

[imojoebunny]

DH didn't call me back and I wanted to talk to him before I locked, and our rate on this house went from 5.25% to 5.5 in an hour. Such is life. You do the best you can, and don't worry too much about what you can't control.

We refied in a few years and now have a better rate, but at the time, even 5.5% was good.  

[cjeanette]

Jul 11, 2013 21:16:12 GMT -5 operagirl said:

My first house had a 17% interest rate:-).

What year? Didn't they go higher than that at one point? How my grandparents had interest rates like that and still paid a 30 year loan back in 10 amazes me.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using proboards

[sillygoosegirl]

I don't think so. But I've said that a few times before and been wrong. Nobody knows.

[sillygoosegirl]

Jul 11, 2013 21:22:47 GMT -5 cjeanette said:

Jul 11, 2013 21:16:12 GMT -5 operagirl said:

My first house had a 17% interest rate:-).

What year? Didn't they go higher than that at one point? How my grandparents had interest rates like that and still paid a 30 year loan back in 10 amazes me.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using proboards

17% would be a pretty big incentive to throw every single extra penny toward the loan. At least it would be for me.

[leos]

Jul 11, 2013 15:10:01 GMT -5 greengardener said:

We were able to lock our rate at 2.5% literally a day before the rates spiked. DH was sweating bullets waiting for the contract to clear attorney review, since he knew rates were going to jump.

not sure hot you  got  2.5% as  rate did not  get below 3.5

[aurora]

Jul 12, 2013 9:35:21 GMT -5 greengardener said:

Jul 12, 2013 9:07:44 GMT -5 leos said:

not sure hot you  got  2.5% as  rate did not  get below 3.5

I assure you we got a 2.5%.  It's a 5/5 ARM that we plan to pay off in 10 years.  We did a cost analysis, and no matter how you sliced it, it was still cheaper than a fixed rate for us.

www.penfed.org/55-Adjustable-Rate-Mortgage/?intcid=ad-55ARM-PenFedORG-Ticker-04152013%20&WT.ac=1021 

That sounds like a great plan to me!  I've never personally had an ARM, but if you can be sure you can pay it off much faster than 30 years and the allowable adjustments during your payoff time are limited, then they can be great resources.

Not directed at greengardener but at the thread in general, when we have these discussions we should also be discussing discount points, too.  Our lock, for example, allowed us to choose between 4 rates from 4.375%-4.75% with varying levels of fees up to refunds at closing, so it's really the APR and not the basic rate that matters.  For us, we got money back if we agreed to 4.625% and had to pay a fee if we agreed to 4.5%, so I guess that means the official rate was somewhere between those two.