Hello, hello everybody. I am Sean Zalmanoff, and this is the Mortgage Rate Update coming to you today. What is today? Today is November 9th and this is your weekly rate update.
We had an amazing post-election bond rally last week. Rates, I think for the 12th time this year, it’s at least the eighth time this year, take down to the lowest levels they had ever been. I’m a broken record saying that that is a broken record, but gosh, it happened again. But then something huge happened this morning. If you’re looking at your 401k balances, if you’re invested in the stock market, you are a happy camper today. Pfizer announced their first vaccine results for their phase III trial. They’ve been partnered with a company BioNTech, that they’d been working on a vaccine with. In the first round of injections with it, or the first doses, they were hoping to be greater than 70% success rate.
There’s another dose that follows 21 days later, but after the first seven days, there was a 90% success rate, and somebody will still be given another dose after that. So really positive news long-term for us getting back to what normal is for us. We have Moderna, I believe it’s on the 16th is going to release their prelim phase III study as well, too. Good signs for the market, good signs for the stock market, good signs for getting back to normal, but it’s not as good for mortgage rates. The bonds are a flight to safety, a flight to quality, a flight to uncertainty, and because of this good news people have sold bonds this morning, which is making rates go up a little bit. Now just take that with a grain of salt, because there has been at least three or four times that I’ve told you this year, “Hey, rates are at an all time low,” and then they’ve moved lower.
Well, they are still lower today than some of the old all-time lows. It’s still a fantastic time to be locking into your mortgage refinancing, if you haven’t, this may be a reason to actually get off the fence a little bit sooner than later, and still it’s an amazing home market. One of the things that I keep talking about with our home market here is the home affordability index, which measures how far your dollar goes in purchasing a house, is still about as low as it’s been since 2016. Even though home prices are up, rates being down is dramatically increasing the amount of house that somebody can buy and the affordability of it. I’m not saying that every house is affordable out there, and it’s easy to buy one with the thin inventory in the market. But just some things to understand what’s going on, what’s happening in our market. Yep, I am Sean Zalmanoff, and my team of mortgage advisors is here to serve you and make sure that we put you in the best mortgage possible.
Hope you have an amazing and fantastic week, hope we continue to get great news about our overall health and in that return to normal, and yeah, just having a great and awesome week. I really appreciate y’all.
