Mortgage rates are better this morning.
Interest rates improved yesterday afternoon after minutes from the last Federal Reserve monetary policy meeting were released. The notes indicated that the Fed was prepared to embark on a 3rd round of quantitative easing (QE3), an expectation that had waned over the previous 2 weeks.
The drop in interest rates may be short lived though. One Fed official stated earlier today that the comments in the minutes were “a bit stale”. Furthermore, housing data out today was better than expected. The commerce department reported that new homes sales increased by more than expected last month. In addition, the Federal government’s latest index for home prices showed that home prices rose by 3.0% at the end of the 2nd quarter compared to a year earlier.
There hasn’t been any significant developments out of Europe in the past couple weeks. In the last 24 hours interest rates have recovered about 60% of the increase they experienced over the previous 2 weeks. I don’t think it’s a bad time to lock in.
Current Outlook: locking