The average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage is at an all-time low of 3.4 percent, Freddie Mac reported, in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s newest “quantitative easing” initiative involving the purchase of mortgage-backed securities.
All mortgage products, except the five-year adjustable-rate mortgage, are at record lows. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is down from 3.49 percent last week and 4.01 percent a year ago.
“Fixed mortgage rates continued to decline this week, largely due to the Federal Reserve’s purchases of mortgage securities, and should support an already improving housing market,” said Frank Nothaft, chief economist at Freddie Mac, in a prepared statement. “Additionally, new home sales in July and August had the strongest two-month pace since March and April 2010.”
Separately, the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said the overall quality of first-lien mortgages serviced by large banks improved in the second quarter from the same period a year ago.
The percentage of mortgages that were current and performing at the end of the quarter was 88.7 percent, compared with 88.1 percent a year earlier. Seriously delinquent mortgages ”“ those at least 60 days past due or held by bankrupt borrowers whose payments are 30 or more days past due ”“ fell to their lowest level in three years at 4.4 percent, versus 9.2 percent a year earlier.
OCC credited several factors for the year-over-year improvement, including strengthening economic conditions; loan-servicing transfers; and the ongoing effects of home-retention loan modification programs.
