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Housing

Will Lowest Mortgage Rates Help Housing?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Thirty-year mortgage rates fell to a low that has not been seen since numbers were first recorded in the 1980s. The rate reached 3.56%. Will that rate help the housing market? So far, the answer is mixed. RealtyTrac reported yesterday that foreclosures rose year-over-year in June, and it suggested the trend will continue. Foreclosed homes usually bring down prices in the neighborhoods around them. This downward pressure causes potential buyers to worry that prices have not found bottom.

Data from Case-Shiller shows that a bottom has not been reached in many large cities. But in a modest number of markets, prices have begun to turn up. Probably home prices are so low there, along with mortgage rates, that they are too cheap to resist.

Doulas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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