Mortgage Rate Update February 24, 2011

Mortgage rates are unchanged this morning.

Oil prices continued to rise on Thursday morning on fears of supply disruption because of political unrest in Libya & Algeria.  At this point no disruptions have been reported and a Saudi oil official told reporters that no European companies have requested additional supply since the uprisings in Northern Africa.  This leads me to believe that if the circumstances don’t spread to other oil-producing nations we should see oil prices retreat quickly.  Since mortgage rates have improved thanks to a flight-to-safety on these same fears I suspect we could also see rates rise quickly as well.

In domestic economic news, weekly jobless claims fell by more than expected last week.  Continuing claims are now at the lowest level since October of 2008 which is a good sign for the economy.  It wasn’t all good news though.  According to the Commerce Department new home sales fell by 12.6% last month almost reaching the lowest annualized level on record.

The US Treasury is hoping for stronger demand today when it auctions the remaining leg of $99 billion in note supply for the week.  The previous two auctions have been met with so-so demand.  Click HERE to understand how these auctions can impact mortgage rates.

Calling the end of a flight-to-safety trade is always tough but we’ve seen mortgage rates decline by .25% in the past week so I suggest locking in the savings.

Current outlook: locking

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