Atlanta Mortgage Rate Trend for the week of 09/11/2006

A cooling housing market may well be helping to sustain the latest trend in average reductions across the board for Atlanta mortgage rates this week.

Bucking the slight hick-cup of last week and back on track of downward movement, Bankrate.com’s national survey of large lenders has minor reductions across all referenced categories of mortgage rates.  According to Bankrate.com’s national survey of large lenders, Atlanta 30-year fixed-term mortgage rates went down 1 basis point, from 5.95% last week to 5.94% this week.  The 15-year fixed-term mortgage rate and 5-year adjustable-rate mortgage rate both say reductions of 2 basis points, from 5.66% to 5.64% and 5.71% to 5.69%, respectively.  A fall of one basis point is equivalent to one-hundredth of one percentage point.  However, while these may look like minor falls, taken as a whole the average fixed-term and adjustable-rate mortgage rates have seen a more significant reduction of at least 0.5% in the last six months, although all of the reference mortgage rates still have some way to go if they are to get back to where they were this time last year.

The slight reductions this week in the 30-year and 15-year fixed-term mortgage rates and the 5-year adjustable-rate mortgage rate will, however, have pleased most homeowners in the US worried that last week’s slight rise in mortgage rates were a sign that US mortgages rates may be going north of the strategically important 6.0% mark again.