WASHINGTON (AP) – Nov. 7, 2008 – Mortgage rates dropped this week, providing a dose of welcome news to prospective homebuyers.
Freddie Mac, the mortgage giant, reported Thursday that rates on 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6.20 percent for the week ending Nov. 6. That was down sharply from 6.46 percent last week.
The retreat in mortgages rates [...]

The central bank on Wednesday reduced its target for the federal funds rate, the interest banks charge on overnight loans, to 1 percent, a low last seen in 2003-2004. The funds rate has not been lower since 1958, when Dwight Eisenhower was president.
In a brief statement explaining Wednesday‘s action, the Fed said the “intensification of [...]

Rates on 30-year mortgages dropped sharply again this week, falling to the lowest level in seven months.
On Thursday, Freddie Mac’s nationwide survey found that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages had declined to 5.78 percent from 5.93 percent the previous week.
It was the fifth consecutive weekly decline and dropped the 30-year mortgage rate to the lowest level since [...]

With financial institutions reeling from coast to coast, what does it all mean to the housing and mortgage markets whose problems triggered these catastrophes?
Believe it or not, the past eight days provided a dose of good news, at least in the short term, because mortgage rates are down. Long-term impact is harder to predict - [...]

Tighten your seat belt. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues are doing just that as they prepare to ride out economic and financial storms by holding their most important interest rate steady this week and probably through the rest of this year.
Unemployment is rising, consumers are clamping down as paychecks shrink and the [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Assocation said Wednesday that its composite index of loan applications rose slightly in the week ended Aug. 22, as interest rates slipped.
The composite index rose a seasonally adjusted 0.5%, the MBA said, as the refinance index increased 0.3% from the previous week and the purchase index increased 0.6%.
The refinance share of mortgage [...]

Federal Reserve policy makers agreed at their meeting three weeks ago that their next change in interest rates will be to raise them, while reaching no conclusion on the timing of such a decision, according to minutes of the gathering released in Washington today.
“Although members generally anticipated that the next policy move would likely be [...]

U.S. sales of previously owned homes rose a healthy 3.1% in July from the previous month, but growing inventories of unsold homes and rising mortgage interest rates continue to thwart a full housing-market recovery.
Existing-home sales increased to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of five million units, the highest since February, the National Association of Realtors [...]

Mortgage rates fell last week, yet that didn’t inspire more borrowers to apply for a mortgage, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s latest survey, released on Wednesday.
Application volume fell a seasonally adjusted 1.5% for the week ended Aug. 15, compared with the previous week. Volume was down 34.2% compared with the same week in 2007, [...]

Rates on 30-year mortgages remained at the same level for a third week while rates on other types of home loans posted small declines.
Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, reported Thursday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6.52 percent this week. That was the same rate as the two previous weeks and represented the second highest rate [...]