The real estate market has been on rocky waters throughout this year. There were times when it looked as though you had hit upon the most opportune moment for buying your house and there were other times when the idea of buying a house or property did not look a profitable proposition. The government’s tax credits for first time home buyers boosted the morale of some buyers and they hurriedly went and bought some properties. Added to this, the interest rates on mortgage loans for 30 years have lowered remarkably and are significantly lower than the lowest of last year’s interest rates. According to Yahoo, presently the interest rate is 4.78%, which is lower than the 4.83 percent of April 2009, which happens to be the lowest of this year till this new reading. Compared to this year, last year, the interest rates in around the same months were around 5.97 % . So, do the low interest rates encourage you to buy a new dream house for yourself?

There’s more good news! The 30 year mortgage rates are not the only ones to plummet! Their kin, the 15-year mortgage rates followed suit very recently and have fallen from 4.32 % to 4.29 %. Unbelievable though it may seem, this is the lowest percentage of interest rates for the 15 –year mortgages in the last 18 years! The 5-year adjustable–rate mortgage have also gone down from 4.25 % to 4.18 % on an average, in the last few days. However, the 1-year mortgage rates seem to be the most of immune members of the family of mortgage rates because they seem to be maintaining a steady value of 4.35 %. Now, does this motivate you further to go ahead with your property buying scheme?

If you want to know why the mortgage rates have shown a decline in recent times, you should attribute it to the Government’s $1.5 trillion venture of purchasing mortgage- based securities in an endeavor to lower the interest rates, last November. The Government’s initiative has paid off well, as this has managed to keep the interest rates on mortgages from going beyond 5 % since April this year. This in turn has revived mortgage refinancing and today on an average, an American gets to save up approximately $100 on a monthly basis, on a $200,000 mortgage of a fixed rate.

So ultimately, the falling interest rates on mortgages might pump up your adrenaline with the excitement of the possibility of owning a home of your choice in the coming times. That is good, but you’ve got to think about something else too. If you go by Wall Street Journal report, you’ll find that refinancing might be slowing down after all, since the time it started last year. In the third week of November refinancing fell by a disappointing 9.5 %. This inspite of falling mortgage rates is indeed pretty surprising. Also in the second week of November, the number of applications for mortgage was noticed to be lesser by 2.5 % than before. So, what should we infer? Are lowered interest rates not reason enough for boosting up home purchases? What do you think?