In one of the first responses to yesterday’s look at Seattle’s long-term Case-Shiller Home Price Index Ross Peterson brought up a good point: So equivalent annual income increase did not keep up with the housing prices increase but did the buying power keep up with the increase? I think the interests rates have fallen in…
Tag: Interest Rates
Interest Rates Hit All-Time Lows: Scare Tactics in 3…2…1…
Various sources are reporting that mortgage rates have fallen to their lowest point ever this week, with the average 30-year fixed-rate loan priced at a paltry 4.69%. Of course, you know what that means… As soon as rates start to climb a few tenths of a percentage point, we will no doubt be subjected to…
The Curious “Logic” of Home Salesmen
J. Lennox Scott in March (original post deleted, screenshot here): …if interest rates increase by one-half point from the current rate, as has been predicted by many economists, a buyer with a loan amount of $200,000 will lose approximately $11,000 in purchasing power. … The interest rate differential can be applied to all buyers in…
Charting How Much Home the Median Income can Afford
A few days ago on my sarcastic interest rates post, Dave0 asked: I wonder what the chart would look like if you graphed out, from 2000 to present, the price someone could afford to buy with the given interest rate at the time (from the graph above), with payments equal to 28% of the median…
Checking in on SKYROCKETING Interest Rates
Good thing we panicked last month about the mind-blowing 0.3-point jump in interest rates. The era of record-low mortgage rates is over. The average rate on a 30-year loan has jumped from about 5 percent to more than 5.3 percent in just the past week. As mortgages get more expensive, more would-be homeowners are priced…