This week saw the unofficial start to the Holiday Season with Thanksgiving and American homeowners once again have a lot to be thankful for as Atlanta mortgage rates saw yet another week of cross the board falls in interest rates.
According to Bankrate.com’s national survey of large lenders, 30-year fixed rate mortgages once again saw the biggest week-on-week fall with Atlanta mortgage rates for 30-year fixed rate mortgages falling 3 basis points for the week from last week’s 5.74% to this week’s 5.71%. 5-year adjustable rate mortgage rates saw a 2 basis point fall week-on-week from last week’s 5.55% to this week’s 5.53%. 15-year fixed rate mortgage rates saw the small fall, of 1 basis point, week-on-week from last week’s 5.49% to this week’s 5.48%. A one basis point fall equates to one one-hundredth of one percent.
Despite the continuous good news of falling 5-year adjustable rate mortgage rates over the past quarter, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, almost half of all mortgage applicants in the last week were looking to refinance their home loans, with the vast majority looking to refinance their home loans as fixed-rate mortgage. With year low Atlanta mortgage rates on offer at the moment, the gap between 5-year adjustable rate mortgage rates and 30-year / 15-year fixed rate mortgage rates has now narrowed so that not much difference can be seen between the two. Nonetheless, “with an estimated $560 billion in adjustable rate mortgages set to adjust in the coming year, we’re seeing a growing trend of people taking advantage of these still historically low rates by refinancing into a fixed-rate mortgage” commented Bob Walter. And who can really blame them when the alternative is the uncertain feeling of not knowing if this downward trend in interest rates is going to continue into the New Year.
Happy Thanksgiving to all our readers!
Atlanta mortgage rates saw another superb tumble across the board according to Bankrate.com’s national survey of large lenders. Continuing what has been a relative bustle of continuous week-on-week good news for Atlanta homeowners, Bankrate.com’s national survey of large lenders saw 30-year fixed rate mortgage rates fall from last week’s 5.80% to this week’s new benchmark of 5.74%. This represents a fall of 6 basis points in one week, where a basis point equals one percentage point of one percent. In itself this may not seem like a massive fall in 30-year fixed rate mortgage rates, but given the recent downward trend in offered 30-year fixed rate mortgage rates, it shows a robust and defiant trend is staying the course.Thankfully, 30-year fixed rate mortgage rates were not the only Atlanta mortgage rates to tumble this week. 15-year fixed rate mortgage rates also saw a fall, this time by 3 basis points, from last week’s rate of 5.52% to this weeks 5.49%. 5-year adjustable rate mortgage rates also shrugged off its minor rise last week to rebound back to 5.55%, from last week’s 5.57%, and to end the week only one basis point higher than the low of 5.54% two weeks ago.
With economic indicators seeing cross the board falls in all categories of the economy in the past week, Atlanta mortgage rates took advantage of the optimism to post some of the healthiest rates for the year-to-date. Indeed, the Atlanta 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate has not been as attractive since the last week in January of 2006, making this week’s offer rate the best it has been in 11 months. With any luck, and a good prevailing wind, Atlanta homeowners should be able to see out a turbulent year for mortgage rates with a cross section of mortgage rates that are lower than those at the start of the year. And that is not a position you would have got good odds for even only as far back as a month ago.
While changes may have been in wind elsewhere across America this week, little or no changes were seen in Atlanta mortgage rates. According to Bankrate.com’s national survey of large lenders, all Atlanta mortgage rates recorded a fairly flat week, with 5-year adjustable rate mortgage rates seeing the biggest climb from last weeks 5.54% to this week’s 5.57%. 15-year fixed rate mortgage rates saw a 2 basis point jump week-on-week, from last week’s 5.50% to this week’s 5.52% and 30-year fixed rate mortgage rates recorded the lowest rise of a mere one basis point week-on-week to this week’s 5.80% from last’s 5.79%. Nonetheless, coming on the back of last week’s massive drop in cross the board Atlanta mortgage rates, American homeowners will no doubt be more concerned reading about the winds of change in Washington this week than in this week’s minimal changes in home mortgage rates.
Following hot on the heels of last week’s fairly hefty fall in home mortgage rates, the Mortgage Bankers Association is reporting a massive jump of 8.8% in home loan applications last week. This encouraging news is somewhat dampened by the corresponding news that half of new home loan applications in America during the course of the last week were refinance lending home loan applications. Rather surprisingly, however, a full one quarter of the new home loan applications in the past week were made by American homeowners looking to refinance their home loans out of long term 30 and 15-year fixed rates mortgage rates and move over into 5-year adjustable rate mortgage. Surprising because this trend is almost a 180 on what most industry analysts had been expecting following the past few months of falling mortgage interest rates, where most were expecting American homeowners to wait till the last minute before jumping ship and refinancing into long-term fixed rate mortgages. Obviously the good olde American public knows something that many of our more experienced pundits don’t – and we ca only hope that is a prolonged drop in American home mortgage rates over the coming months.
After a couple of weeks of steadily increasing mortgage rates, homeowners will be delighted to hear that once again this week saw Atlanta mortgage rates plunge dramatically across the board. According to Bankrate.com’s national survey of large lenders, this week saw all Atlanta mortgage rates fall by 10 basis points or more. Best among the home mortgage rates on offer to come out on top were 15-year fixed rate mortgage rates, which saw an 11 basis point drop from last week’s 5.66% to this week’s 5.55%. Both the 30-year fixed rate mortgage rates and 5-year adjustable rate mortgage rates were no slackers however, with both achieving double-digit 10 basis point drops from 5.94% and 5.67%, respectively, last week to this week’s 5.84% and 5.57%, respectively. With this dramatic fall in Atlanta mortgage rates many would think that many potential homeowners would be lining up to buy their homes this week, but it would seem that we may now all be looking forward to Thanksgiving as the number of American’s applying for home mortgages actually saw a small fall off week-on-week this week. Nonetheless, these continued declines should start to help with the housing market weakness that we have been experiencing so far in 2006.
