Mortgage rates will increase in 2011 while housing markets will improve, predicted experts at the International Builders’ Show in Orlando, FL, this week.
Freddie Mac Chief Economist Frank Nothaft, a speaker at the conference, predicted that mortgage rates will reach 5.5 percent by the end of 2011, the AP reported. In making that call, he raised his prediction from December when he said rates will stay below 5 percent this year. Check current mortgage rates.
Nothaft also thinks home prices will bottom out this year. “House prices will bottom out in 2011, and, by 2012, the house-price metric shows a gradual increase,” he said.
National Association of Home Builders Chief Economist David Crowe, another speaker at the conference predicted that home sales will rise about 26 percent this year. Home construction will increase 21 percent from last year, home prices will stay pretty much the same, and unemployment will fall below 9.4 percent.
Although increase in home sales sounds good, it’s an increase from anemic levels last year.
“You have to keep in mind that these increases are off a very low base. These numbers are still far, far below the levels we’d seen before the downturn,” MarketWatch quoted Nothaft as saying.
Any one comparing this year’s International Builders’ Show to its previous visits to Orlando can gauge the change in the national housing market. When the show visited the city from 2005 to 2008 average attendance was over 101,000, filling Orlando’s Orange County Convention Center to capacity. This year about 55,000 were expected.
Loading ...
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment