It’s a hotly debated question among economists and analysts right now: What will the recent spike in mortgage rates do to the housing market? Mortgage rates fell to 4.75% last week, down from 4.8% for the average 30-year fixed-rate two weeks ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.Existing home sales in August hit a 6½-year high, rising by 1.7% from July, according to the National Association of Realtors. The report measures sales that closed for contracts that were signed one or two months earlier. Read more.
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House hunters are increasingly going mobile with their real estate searches, according to a new survey by The Search Agency, a global online marketing firm. The report shows that growth in real estate searches on tablets and smartphones has tripled in the past year, while desktop searches have mostly stayed flat. The Search Agency analyzed data from its real estate clients in order to identify online search trends from July to August as compared to the same time period last year. Read more.
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Consumers shopping for a home might want to pick up the pace: Getting a mortgage will likely become more challenging and costly next year. Loan limits for popular mortgages are scheduled to drop in January, according to a Wall Street Journal report this week. The Federal Housing Finance Agency is planning to slash the maximum size of mortgages eligible to be backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which currently run as high as $417,000 in most parts of the country and up to $625,500 in pricier cities, including New York and San Francisco. That same month, new mortgage rules by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau go into effect, which restrict the types of mortgages lenders can provide. The changes could leave next year’s mortgage applicants with fewer and more expensive financing options to choose from than what’s currently available, experts say. Read more.
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