Mortgage rates may have bottomed out

A sustained increase in mortgage rates over the past several weeks could signal the end of the historic lows seen in 2010, analysts told the New York Times. The popular 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hit 4.17 percent on Nov. 11, the lowest in mortgage giant Freddie Mac’s nearly four-decade history of tracking rates. But since then, rates have ticked upward to 4.83 percent, which the government-backed company recorded Dec. 16. Meanwhile, the Mortgage Bankers Association forecasts an increase in 30-year fixed rates to 5.1 percent by this time next year and 5.7 percent two years from now. According to Columbia University Business School real estate professor Christopher Mayer, “the window of low rates could have left us.” But even though buying or refinancing a home is beginning to grow more expensive, the cost of a mortgage in the U.S. is a far cry from what it once was, as rates have sat between 6 and 8 percent for most of the decade. [NYT]