Mortgage Interest rates and QE - Information for prospective NW Tucson, Oro Valley and Marana home buyers

Although Fannie says that the recent uptick in mortgage interest rates shouldn't affect the housing market recovery, they did see fit to revise their long-range forecast for rates upwards by .5% to 4.7% for a 30yr fixed loan by the end of 2013.  This revision was based primarily on two things, first was the larger-than-expected jump that rates have taken in the past month and then second, the ongoing speculation that the government manipulation of the markets, otherwise known as Quantitative Easing (or QE), is going to start winding down.  
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake all but put an end to the speculation in a press conference yesterday when he stated that the Fed would be looking to put the brakes on QE later this year and potentially end the program sometime in 2014.  

Without issuing an opinion about QE itself, I'll leave that to the economists, what is widely known is that QE is responsible for helping suppress mortgage interest rates and keep them at their historic lows that we've recently been experiencing.  It is a safe bet to assume that as the program is slowed to a stop that we will see a corresponding increase/jump in mortgage interest rates.

You can read more about this here:

Fannie Mae: Rising mortgage rates won’t trip up recovery | Inman News



Stefanie Stehling - Real Estate Agent serving Northwest Tucson, Oro Valley, Marana, AZ
stefaniestehling@gmail.com