Mortgage Rates Tumble! Great News, But No Housing Bottom Until Prices Stabilize

The Fed needs to stay the f out of the housing market. Let the markets find a bottom. This is only going to prolong the pain albeit slowly. Everyone suffers. The homeowners as well as renters who want to buy a home. Homeowners will hang on to homes they cannot afford because of false hopes. Renters know that the bottom is not in yet. It will just drag on for years. Let the markets find a bottom fast. Low rates will not attract too many wise buyers who know that the rates are bound to go up soon again. When that happens the creep to the bottom for housing starts again. The Fed just doesn't get it. Or may be he likes slow Chinese torture.

If jobs were not a concern there wouldn't be a housing problem...

1st!!!!!

It like a riddle. It is a combination,of Buy,Hold,Sell or the most obvious wait and see........To buy a home........It is a matter of temptation to go or wait.......The option now is To Buy at the right time...Hang on a bit.........

Apprently passing Economics is like going to school on a football scholarship! You people are idiots. Two things that MUST happen to stabilize the economy, Raise revenue IE tax the very wealthy their fair share. 2.) Stop spending money you don't have. No matter what interest rates are Americans can not afford to all live in three hundred thousand dollar homes working at McDonalds!

Murf the idiot if you have no opinion stay off the board you idiot you were not first by the way dummy

i loves my house. my house keep the snow from landing on my head when i sleep. house worth lots of money.

i love my feet

SF Bay Area inflated to over 300% in 10 years starting since 1997... we are no where near the bottom...compare prices to inflation over the past 10 years.. housingbubblebust.com/OFHEO/Major/NorCal

You can get mortgage rates down to 0% interest for 30 years and you still wouldn't have any lenders who would be lending the money because they are too busy buying other banks instead of lending. Plus with all the small to medium companies going out of business or laying people off there may never be anybody in the near future that will have a job they can depend on to buy a home. Those of us who have jobs and know we will have a job for a long time are not even thinking of buying anything. We are saving and paying off our debt so that when the market starts its turn around we can buy and cash in like all the rich people do.

There is a 900 lb gorilla in the corner that no one wants to talk about. It is at the core of why we are in this mess and why NOTHING THEY DO WILL FIX IT. The gorilla ? The wealthy elite in this country with the help of our government leaders have SYSTEMATICALLY depressed real wages for the last 30+ years. Fully 65-70% of the american public don't make anything. You can talk all day about these other factors and they will have little or no impact. The America you know circa 2007 may never exist again. Everything is in place to make sure that 30% of the people enjoy the lion share of the benefits of the other 70%'s work.

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies. - Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826, Third President of the United States

People are whining about 40% drops in values. You need to look at the fact that they went up 300-400% when they really should have gone up 18-20% in value. It has to drop more to get to the true, real value. Too bad some idiots paid too much. They signed the mortgage - deal with the fall out and stop crying already! Your stupidity is NOT my problem.

Simple quit listening to the talking heads. Refuse to participate. Buy only what you need, no credit, no banks no wall stret no bloated government.

Yeah, more taxes are the answer...always worked in the past, huh? It amazes me there are still semi-educated people out there that don't understand basic economics. More money in one's pocket=More spending, more investment. Less money=Less spending, lest investment. By the way, the top 2% of Americans pay roughly 50% of the tax bill and create most of the jobs the other 98% enjoy. How are they not paying their "fair share"? Quit spitting out the democrat talking points on class envy and start thinking for yourself.

The Feds crashed the financial system, which was, after all, essentially only a Ponzi scheme. Their mantra now is "doing nothing is not an option". Thus, the economy will continue to accelerate downward until "doing nothing" is the *only* option. At that point, we'll see a bottom come into the market. Figure two or three years...

November & December of last year, the economy was down, jobs were lost, interests drop, people bought houses, the same for this year, just that people know we are in a depression, so they aren't buying, instead they are saving, there will come a time when savings stops and buying begins at these all time lows, they will have so much excess cash that the housing market will be oversold once again. History repeats itself, no matter how long it takes.

I have been sitting on the sidelines for 10 years waiting for this moment I knew would come. I saw the housing prices spirling upward out of control and I low ball bid on houses only to be laughed at. Now those same laughers and calling my real estate agant offering to take my now high offer what a bunch of bone heads I now have over 200k saved up in cash after 10 years, I caould pay cash for a home in Denver, and I will, but gonna wait a bit so the cold weather stings the greedy homeowners a little more and they lower their prices another 10%, then I'll scoop up on the cheap, live there and rent out extra rooms for 5-10 years and sell for hugh profits. Thanks uncle sam for teaching me how to save back in the 90's while in college, student loans made me what I am today.

I don't know about the rest of the country but when the auto industry files bankruptcy and the rest of the layoffs begin we can look forward to a new round of housing defaults and much lower prices.

The bottomline is that lenders need to loosen guidelines. Not to where they were when this whole mess started but they've overcompensated. Very few people can qualify to buy homes which is what we need to turn this mess around. I'd prefer it if they raised rates to 7-8% and loosened guidelines...that'd create business now and business later when rates drop again 2-3 years down the road. As far as I'm concerned they can lower rates to 1% and that's only going to help the select few who actually qualify with today's silly guidelines. How many of you out there can come up with 3.5% for a down payment (3.5% of $300K = $10,500) right now with the economic issues out there? On Oct 1st of this year many new restrictions were set in place...yeah, that's right, "restrictions". How are restrictions going to help the housing market? Loosen guidelines and let's lend!!