With all the grim economic news lately it's hard to imagine that there's good news too... yet there is. You may ask yourself 'how can that be?' With fixed thirty year rates down to 6.24% and fifteen year rates down to 5.9%, first-time buyers are ready to get into their new homes with great deals.
Furthermore, last week new mortgage applications increased by 12 percent, and applications to buy houses with FHA loans were up by 15.3 percent. Applications for conventional mortgages rose by six and a half percent.
Also, pending home sales were higher than earlier this year for the second straight month which is 1.6 percent higher than September 2007. Pending sales contracts in the western states were up by 3.7 percent, and now are amazingly 39.7 percent higher than they were this time last year. Though unemployment is on the rise it's projected that home sales will slowly and steadily begin a multi-year upward trend, with 5.02 million total sales this year, 5.3 million for 2009, and 5.6 million for 2010.
Remember: the stock market is NOT the housing market! They are on a completely different set of tracks and rarely mirror each other for long. Though the housing market has been in bad shape for the last two and a half years, trends show that it is stabilizing and moving toward recovery.