In this declining market of mortgage interest rates, it is very important to keep a close eye on where the markets are heading. Interest rates change daily and lately they have been changing multiple times per day. The national average for mortgage rates are below 6%. This is awesome! Whether you are that buyer who is sitting on the fence waiting (which I don’t recommend) or looking to refinance, now may be the time. How can you fathom that there will be a better time in the future to buy a home? The markets can only go up and many of them already are. Agents, if you have clients on the fence, now is the time to hit them with the facts and the possibilities.

We have hit rock bottom a while ago in my opinion. If you take out Florida, Nevada, and California out of the picture, the real estate market really never really looked that bad. I am seriously thinking about refinancing some of my property and I am currently keeping a close eye on mortgage rates. I use bankrate.com to track interest rates. Click here to use a great tool by Bankrate to check rates anywhere in the country.

The coolest feature allows you to set up an email alert when the rates hit your target level. This means that you do not have to worry about looking on the internet everyday trying to track rates. This site seems to have the rates from the largest of lenders. This is a great tool for agents who (1) want an excuse to contact some leads that have been on the fence and (2) to have great info to provide in emails, calls and mailings to current leads in your pipeline.

I will let you know how I make out in my quest to lower the amount of interest that I am paying.

The mortgage markets have gone through some very interesting times lately. Have we seen the worst of it, yet? I guess that is to be determined. The involvement of the government to step in and bailout mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has gotten us one step closer to getting things back to normal. But we’ve only gone through the first wave of mortgage market fallout. There are tons of adjustable rate mortgages that are yet to reset. This mortgage fallout will likely spill over to other consumer debts, such as car loans and credit cards. Those who lost their homes, I would assume also maxed out their credit cards and lost their cars during that same process of losing their home. American Express has been put on a “watch list”. Some of these larger mortgage holders also have large credit card portfolios that will be at risk.

I think that the government’s bailout was the right thing to do. It gets everyone in the right mindset to work on repairing the mess that has been created. As long as the government allows the private sector to retain ultimate control, it will get us back to a sense of normalcy. The government’s involvement has helped lower mortgage rates and it will help keep mortgage rates down as the upswing continues in the real estate markets. We have seen some positive data come out of the real estate industry lately, helping to make us all feel good about the investments that we have made in real estate. For me, I can’t wait to see the consistent price increases month over month.

If you want to find out more, the Seattle Times did a decent story on the situation.

So, I found this page where you can actually download a free mortgage calculator for your website. There are so many times when one of our remarkableagents.com customers wants a mortgage calculator and we usually refer them to a site where you actually have to pay for the calculator… so this is a welcome surprise.

Try out the mortgage calculator here.

Get the code for the free mortgage calculator here.