Mortgage Interest Rates Remain Steady for week ending 12/12/20

Mortgage interest rates for buying a home on the Palos Verdes Peninsula remained steady near  record lows this week for conforming loans but remain higher to jumbo loans . The following are excerpts from the newsletter on interest rates published by HSH Associates:

“The light calendar of economic data out this week didn’t have much to sway investors in one way or the other, so interest rates remained pretty flat along with major stock indexes slightly soggy over the last few days.

Applications for mortgage credit settled back by 1.2% in the week ending December 4. After a three week string of increases, requests for purchase-money mortgages dropped back by 5%, while those for refinancing kicked 1.8% higher after a holiday-week tumble. Even if not holding at or setting new records each week, mortgage rates will be low enough for long enough to keep attracting consumers, with the typical holiday pause in activity is yet due before demand kicks higher in the usual January spurt.

Although it seems quiet to us at the moment, this sort of thing rarely last for long. Bubbling in the background is the Brexit trade deal mess, still unresolved but approaching deadline, and in any other year this probably would be taking center stage right now, and likely even roiling financial markets, as it did at times over the last year or two. Like everything else at the moment, even that noise seems muted and its effects on markets damped.

The pattern for mortgage rates lately has been a very flat one — a stable and quiet trend, if you will — and this seems likely to be the case again next week”

The following are interest quotes from Allen Bond of Wells Fargo:

Conforming

Jumbo