Brandon Nelson

Monthly Mortgage Rate History 1979 to Now

Bottom line first: It is a RIDICULOUSLY good time to borrow money for a home. Just check out the chart below (courtesy of First American Title) and you can see the interest rates of years past, all the way back to 1979.

If you had to pay the rates today that buyers in February 1982 paid, for the average-price Bellingham home ($336,811 for the past 6 months), even with a 20% down payment, your monthly principal and interest amount would be a gut-twisting $3,997.32!!!

But relax: That same loan amount at today’s rate of 5%, give or take a quarter depending on when you lock, is a back-down-to-earth $1446.46.

It’s true that rates affect prices. If we were in fact paying over 17% for borrowed money, you better believe the average price in Bellingham wouldn’t be in the mid $300K’s.

But no matter how you slant it, once you spend a minute or two looking at the chart below, you’ll realize without any more persuasion that exactly NOW is the time to borrow.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Buyer Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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