Frisco home buyers and refinance prospects have asked, “what are mortgage rates going to do when or if this debt ceiling thing resolves?” There are plenty of folks within this industry that will try to give a definitive answer on this, but just like most of the “crystal ball” questions we loan officers field, nobody really knows for sure.
Recently, one of my young home owners was refinancing because their original builder’s owned loan officer put her into an adjustable rate mortgage at 8.5%. After locking her in on a rate, we received her payoff and realized there was much more in the pay off than we expected and we had to cancel the lock…that was months ago. Now we have some credit wrinkles ironed out, and enough money ready to offset the increased pay off amount, but rates have changed. With me, I always go the conservative route. Rates under 5%, which is where rates are today, are GOOD rates. Rather than playing the gamble game, she locked.
On the other end of the spectrum, I was driving down the road and heard one of the typical Rodney Anderson radio ads. He said on there, something to the extent that the debt ceiling has been increased, and “what does that mean to mortgage rates”, and then went on to say that rates would go up and you needed to commit to refinancing and lock your rate now. My opinion is that he is making a generalized statement that he will not be accountable for, in the name of marketing.
If you are a refinance prospect or wondering if you should go ahead and buy a home while rates are low, the bottom line is, you need to find confidence in this decision on your own by looking at where you are in life financially and where you expect to be in the near future. Rates have been below 6% now for more than 5-6 years, yet they have been up and down from where they are now, middle 4% range for 30yr fixed, and 6% 2-3 times in that period.
Leave a Reply