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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Mortgage rates likely to stay flat

Despite record lows, potential buyers remain wary

E. Scott Reckard Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES – The mortgage market told a sad story throughout 2011: record low rates, but few people taking advantage of them to buy homes.

The likely scenario in the new year, according to many analysts, is more of the same. Although the Federal Reserve has pledged to keep rates low through 2013, experts say high unemployment and home prices that are still falling in many areas provide little incentive for stressed-out consumers to surge back into the housing market.

“I think there may be a little bit of an uptick in units sold,” said Doug Duncan, vice president and chief economist at mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae. “But home prices will probably be down again, so the total dollars spent on purchases is likely to be pretty close” to 2011’s.

Home lending last year totaled $1.3 trillion, down from $1.7 trillion in 2010 and an all-time high of nearly $3.3 trillion in 2005. But 2011’s better-than-expected finish had nothing to do with home purchases. Instead, a decline in 30-year fixed mortgage rates to historic lows of less than 4 percent triggered a wave of refinancings.

Lenders were offering 30-year fixed-rate mortgages to solid borrowers at an average of 3.95 percent last week, the ninth consecutive week of rates at or below 4 percent, Freddie Mac said.

That wrapped up a year of record lows. In 1981 and 1982, the average 30-year mortgage carried an interest rate of more than 16 percent, and the typical rate was above 8 percent as recently as 2000, Freddie Mac said. The average last year was 4.45 percent. Freddie Mac economists are predicting an average of 4.5 percent for 2012, increasing to 5.4 percent in 2013 – still phenomenally low by historic standards.

With lending standards still tight and demand for home loans waning, Morgan Stanley analysts titled their housing outlook for 2012 “The Year of the Landlord.”

Analysts aren’t universally pessimistic: “Housing has hit the bottom and has begun to heal slowly,” said Sung Won Sohn, a professor at California State University Channel Islands and a former economics adviser to the White House and Wells Fargo & Co.

Although large numbers of foreclosures and other distressed home sales are keeping housing prices from rising, the inventory of new homes is at a 49-year low, setting the stage for a rebound, Sohn said in his 2011 housing forecast.

“On balance,” he said, “the increased demand for rental housing, higher rents and multifamily starts should encourage home builders and boost confidence on the part of the potential home buyers. Despite the high level of foreclosures, house prices should stabilize and even rise slightly toward the end of 2012.”