Housing Snapshot
Mortgage interest rates continue to hover around 40-year lows while there is little encouraging news on the job front or in the manufacturing sector. In April, the leading economic indicators increased a faint 0.1 point, and the Consumer Price Index registered a decline of 0.3%. Concerned by a growing, although still distant possibility of deflation, the normally inflation-fighting Federal Reserve has suggested that some inflation is better than no inflation at all. Some analysts now expect the Fed to keep interest rates low until it sees annual price increases move back into a more comforable 2% range. The core rate of inflation has been running at 0.4% for the last three months. [ MORE ]
Mortgage Interest Rates
30-Year Fixed-Rate: 5.45%
15-Year Fixed-Rate: 4.84%
1-Year ARM: 3.67%
Housing Starts - Apr. 2003*
Total: 1.63 million
Single-Family Starts: 1.36 million
Multifamily Starts: 274,000
New Home Sales Mar. 2003*
1.01 milliion
Existing Home Sales Mar. 2003*
5.53 million
* Seasonally adjusted annual rate