Tag Archives: Historically low interest rates

Arizona counties rank high as best places to get a mortgage

Home buyers looking to head back into the market in Arizona may do so in a state where it’s pretty decent to get a mortgage.

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A new SmartAsset.com look at the best counties for getting a mortgage finds those in Arizona among the tops in the country. Pinal County came in first in the state and No. 34 nationally.

The report looked at five-year borrowing costs for as a ranking measure, but also examined property taxes, loan funding rates and annual mortgage payments to determine a composite score.

While the state’s most populous counties, Maricopa and Pima, ranked well nationally they were behind the curve in the state, ranking No. 3 and No. 9 respectively.

The best counties to get a mortgage mostly reside in Florida, with six of the top 10 in the ranking in the Sunshine State.

Methodology

For many people buying a house means securing a mortgage. To determine the best places in the country to get a mortgage we looked at four factors: overall borrowing costs, ease of securing a mortgage, cheap property taxes and cheap annual mortgage payments.

To calculate the overall borrowing costs, we looked at the expected costs over the first five years of a $200,000 mortgage with a 20% down payment, including closing costs. We calculated the ease of getting a mortgage as the ratio of mortgage applications to actual mortgage originations (secured mortgages) in each county. We based annual mortgage payments on the annual principal and interest payments for a $200,000 loan in that location, using average mortgage rates in each county.

Finally, we ranked locations based on these four factors, and then averaged those rankings, giving equal weight to each factor. The areas with the lowest average rankings are the best places to get a mortgage.

Rank County Loan Funding Rate 5 Year Borrowing Costs Property Tax Annual Mortgage Payment Best Mortgage Markets Index
1 Pinal, AZ 63.16% $76,932 $12,606 $14,789 94.24
2 Gila, AZ 58.11% $76,932 $10,586 $14,789 93.08
3 Maricopa, AZ 64.40% $77,437 $9,638 $14,789 76.73
4 Coconino, AZ 62.61% $77,437 $8,294 $14,688 76.70
5 Yavapai, AZ 61.05% $77,437 $9,001 $14,789 75.54
6 Mohave, AZ 59.90% $77,437 $9,166 $14,789 74.90
7 Yuma, AZ 62.26% $77,437 $11,292 $14,884 74.74
8 Graham, AZ 56.77% $77,437 $8,009 $14,789 74.13
9 Pima, AZ 62.13% $77,437 $13,620 $14,688 73.28
10 Cochise, AZ 55.76% $77,437 $9,981 $14,789 72.47
  AZ 56.00% $77,370 $10,134 $14,775
Methodology

Sources: Mortgage Bankers Association, US Census Bureau 2015 5-Year American Community Survey, Informa, Bankrate, government websites, SmartAsset

Mortgage Rates Hover Near All-Time Low

HISTORICPHOENIXDISTRICTS.COM DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | FRIDAY, JULY 01, 2016

Fixed-rate mortgages this week dropped to their lowest averages of the year, which analysts attribute to the fallout from last week’s “Brexit” vote.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.48 percent this week, only 17 basis points from its all-time record low of 3.31 percent in November 2012, Freddie Mac reports.

“In the wake of the Brexit vote, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond plummeted 24 basis points,” says Sean Becketti, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “This extremely low mortgage rate should support solid home sales and refinancing volume this summer.”

Freddie Mac reports the following national averages for the week ending June 30: 

  • 30-year fixed-rate mortgages: averaged 3.48 percent, with an average 0.5 point, falling from last week’s 3.56 percent average. Last year at this time, 30-year rates averaged 4.08 percent. 
  • 15-year fixed-rate mortgages: averaged 2.78 percent, with an average 0.4 point, dropping from last week’s 2.83 percent average. Last year at this time, 15-year rates averaged 3.24 percent. 
  • 5-year hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages: averaged 2.70 percent, with an average 0.5 point, falling from last week’s 2.74 percent average. A year ago, 5-year ARMs averaged 2.99 percent. 

Source: Freddie Mac

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Mortgage Rates Move Lower Than Expected

DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 05, 2016

Janet Yellen Interest Rates

For the fifth consecutive week, mortgage rates trended down, surprising even forecasters. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is now at its lowest average since April 30, 2015.

“Market volatility — and the associated flight to quality — continued unabated this week,” says Sean Becketti, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “The yield on the 10-year Treasury dropped another 15 basis points, and the 30-year mortgage rate fell 7 basis points as well, to 3.72 percent. Both the Treasury yield and the mortgage rate now are in the neighborhood of early-2015 lows. These declines are not what the market anticipated when the Fed raised the Federal funds rate in December. For now, though, sub-4-percent mortgage rates are providing a longer-than-expected opportunity for mortgage borrowers to refinance.”

This week the market forecasted zero hikes in 2016 for the Fed’s short-term rates, which could keep mortgage rates low. Analysts are now predicting that the closely monitored Fed Futures market has nearly a 60 percent chance of no rate hikes at all this year, marking a “dramatic U-Turn from only a month ago when the market was pricing in a 75 percent probability the Fed would increase rates at least once in 2016,” CNNMoney reports.

The Fed had risen rates 0.25 in December, its first increase in nearly 10 years. But with stock markets spiraling downward and the fragile global economy, analysts believe this will likely prompt the Fed to pause in raising rates.

“Things have happened in financial markets and in the flow of economic data that may be in the process of altering the outlook for growth,” Fed vice chairman Bill Dudley told MarketWatch this week.

Freddie Mac reports the following national averages with mortgage rates for the week ending Feb. 4:

  • 30-year fixed-rate mortgages: averaged 3.72 percent, with an average 0.6 point, dropping from last week’s 3.79 percent average. A year ago, 30-year rates averaged 3.59 percent.
  • 15-year fixed-rate mortgages: averaged 3.01 percent, with an average 0.5 point, falling from last week’s 3.07 percent average. Last year at this time, 15-year rates averaged 2.92 percent.
  • 5-year hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages: averaged 2.85 percent, with an average 0.4 point, falling from last week’s 2.90 percent average. A year ago, 5-year ARMs averaged 2.82 percent.

The opportunity to buy a home at low interest rates is still here. For how long, who knows?

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