Mortgage Rates NOT Expected to Stay Around 4.5%
Small changes in mortgage rates can have a big impact on the housing market. North Texas home sales fell about 6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018 in large part due to higher home finance costs. The drop in home buys in the final months of the year caused sales for all of 2018 to drop for the first time in almost eight years. Higher mortgage rates — which rose to about 5 percent in early November — were the biggest contributor to the slump in Dallas-Fort Worth home purchases last year. Now that mortgage costs have eased off a bit, builders and real estate agents say they're seeing more home shoppers hit the market. They'd better hurry. Home finance costs are traditionally the lowest at the start of the year. And the Federal Reserve has signaled that more interest rate hikes are coming in 2019. "It provides a little bit of urgency in a market where buyers have gotten lackadaisical about mortgage rates — they just assumed they would stay low," said Paige Shipp of housing analyst Metrostudy Inc. Potential buyers were caught off guard last year when they found they couldn't afford as much house as they wanted and their monthly mortgage payments would be higher than expected. "The buyers that said interest rates are too high and we can't do this are probably regretting that they didn't get approved for a loan and keep hunting houses," Paige said. "Rates are lower now...
