Though there appeared to be a large recovery in the housing market taking place, it was later credited to buyers securing the homebuyer tax credit before the April 30th deadline. Demand for home loans fell to a 13-year low following the “recovery.” Analysts including Freddie Mac chief economist Frank Nothaft believe that this is a temporary decline, confessing that growth for the first three months of the year fell short of expectations. Nonetheless the housing market has shown signs of being on the right path to recovery, it will be a slow one with inflation being relatively calm. It is the belief of Bob Lipply, who sells Oldsmar homes, that the trend of low prices and financing options on homes will continue.
Freddie Mac has recently made available figures which show that mortgage rates are hovering at record lows amidst an unstable U.S. bond market, with 30-year fixed mortgages averaging 4.79 percent for the week ending June 3, up 0.01 percentage points from the prior week but half a point lower than last year. This is close to the all-time low of 4.71 points reached last December, confirming that 30-year rates have remained mostly unaffected. Equally, 15-year fixed-rate mortgages have shown new record lows reaching 4.20 percent, which is considerably lower than the 4.79 percent average of the previous year. Freddie Mac has been tracking 15-year rates since 1991 and 30-year rates since 1971.