[Here is a guest post from Jessica Later, one of the skilled buyer agents on my team here at Charlesgate Realty Group.  Please enjoy her post, and if you have any questions, please comment below or contact Jessica].

For previous mortgage rate updates (which include graphs of the rates over time) see the following mortgage update posts from May 8, 2009 or April 24, 2009 or April 17, 2009 or see this post about jumbo rates for more about larger loans.

Conforming mortgage rates are up slightly this week after some better than expected economic news indicated that we may be closer to the bottom of the recession than not.  Typically, but not always, when the economy does better, mortgage rates go up -  more investors move their money out of the bond market and into stocks as companies and the economy become stronger, which causes rates to rise.  But even with the slight increase, mortgage rates have been pretty stable near their historic lows for the past month or so (see graph below).

If you been following along in the comments of my previous posts about the conforming limits, you've seen that there has been a lot of interest in when banks were going to be able to finally lend to the new 2009 conforming mortgage loan limits.  I was surprised at the huge level of interest in the new loan limits that my previous posts saw (web traffic and questions I got).  In case you missed those posts, here they are:  2009 Fannie and Freddie conforming loan limits for Boston increased in stimulus bill or 2009 Freddie and Fannie conforming loan limits for Boston.

Conforming Rates

Although conforming mortgage rates have been fairly steady lately, 30 year fixed rates continue to decline even though they are already at record lows.  Here's a graph of the Freddie Mac weekly survey of conforming mortgage rates to date in 2009:

I'm sure you've been hearing lately about how mortgage rates are at their historic lows, but how low is low compared to the past?  Take a peak at the first graph below for a clear look at the rate changes from 1972 to today.  The second chart shows mortgage rates this year so far - currently at 4.82%.  Both of these graphs are created using the widely watched Freddie Mac Mortgage Market survey data, which gives us the national average of 30 year fixed conforming loan rates (see current conforming loan limits in the Boston area).  As I wrote a few days ago, jumbo rates are also coming down a bit but are still much higher than the conforming rates shown in the graphs here:

Details on Obama's "Making Home Affordable" plan were released today be the Treasury.  I wrote a detailed post about the announcement and the loose guidelines of the plan a couple of weeks ago in Obama unveils new $75 billion foreclosure prevention plan.  Now the Treasury has released (some) further details, so I wanted to pass those along as well.

UPDATE (NOV. 5, 2009): The new, higher Fannie and Freddie conforming loan limits have now been extended through 2010 by Congress (more info on that here).  Congress also updated and extended the $8000 tax credit for home buyers today.

30 year fixed mortgage rates are now at an average of 5.10% nationally according to the latest survey from Freddie Mac.  That's the lowest level in the 37 years of their survey.

Buy a luxury yacht.  Obviously!  Under IRS rules, a boat may be considered a second home and therefore elegible to use the mortgage interest tax deduction.