Mortgage rates are holding low. If you’ve been paying attention to rates, they’re still very comfortable for home buyers. This encourages a few things. When we see lower mortgage rates, we see home prices rise and more home sales. This year in February, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) showed a slightly different thing though. Home prices rose for the 84th consecutive month of year-over-year gains, but home sales fell 1.8 percent when compared with a year to the sales the year before. The problem, experts believe is home buyers who have been on the fence about making the leap weren’t aware that the rates have fallen. They speculate that if they did know, home buying would increase before the rates go up again, while they are still low.
Interestingly, just a little inflation creates more purchases, because they want to get in before prices rise more. The problem is that while the Fed tries to keep inflation at 2 percent annually, the economy is changing and that’s hard to reflect in economic models. One big issue is focused around gig workers. More people are self-employed.
“The job market has consistently surprised the Fed,” Bloomberg News reported. “America’s unemployment rate has fallen to less than 4 percent from 10 percent in 2009. Despite the decline, employers have found plenty of workers to hire, generally keeping job gains strong, and inflation has responded only weakly.”
Rates were expected to hit 5 percent and keep rising in 2019, but some people are still talking about seeing rates in the 3 percents. In March, the 30-year fixed FHA had fallen to 3.688! One thing to keep in mind as a homebuyer though is that this market is completely unpredictable. Bloomberg News called it “the new unpredictable,” but Professor John Kenneth Galbraith might have put it best in saying, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.'”
So, buyers would be wise to take advantage of the obvious, current low rates. Those are here and real now. They could go up again at any time, but if rates drop significantly after buying a home at the current rates, refinancing is always an option.
Are You Ready to Move to the Area?
If you’re interested in moving to a community near Jasper, Indiana, check out our listings. Become familiar with the area. Before you start shopping for a home in Indiana, it’s a good idea to explore areas you might like to live in — that way you can get a feel for what properties are available and how much you’ll need to spend. We’ll help you find homes for sale in the most beautiful parts of Indiana.
Let us know if you want us to be on the lookout for Evansville or Dubois County homes with solar arrays, geothermal systems or other green upgrades too!
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Thinking of Selling Your Dubois County Home?
On the other hand, if you’d like to sell your Dubois County real estate, we’d love to help with that too! We offer a completely FREE Comparative Market Analysis (CMA). Zillow’s zestimates can be off by as much as 12 percent! Obviously, to make any decisions, you need to know the actual value of your property, right? A 12 percent difference could be a deal breaker when it comes down to it. Yet, if you contact us today, we can get you a detailed report and the estimated value for your home based on today’s market. Plus, we can get that to you usually in less than one day. So, request your FREE home valuation for your Dubois County home today!
Contact Welsh Realty Corp. Today!
Call us at 812-634-6969 or get in touch with us online. We can also contact you by email if that’s easier for you! Just fill out our contact request form, and we’ll get in touch right away!