The currently running program in which the Federal Reserve is supporting mortgage backed securities has been suppressing the interest rate on mortgages over the past year to help prop up the housing market so that it can likewise help the economy recover from the current economic turmoil that we have been experiencing across the nation.
The Fed’s program has helped many home buyers to acquire affordable mortgage rates, many of them entering the market for the first time; other home owners have benefitted from the program through refinancing their home loans at much lower rates than had been available previously. Many home owners who managed to refinance their homes at the lower interest rate found that their financial situation became more manageable as a result of locking into a rational and reasonable mortgage instead of the rates that they had been paying.
It is fairly undisputed that the Fed’s program helped the housing market enormously over the last year, but what is in dispute is if the program should end on March 31st, as it is scheduled to. The program is set to end this spring because it is expensive and the government is concerned that using it to prop up the market for too long will, in the end, be damaging to the industry. The National Association of Realtors (NAR), claims—along with some other groups in the industry—that the abrupt expiry of the program could result in an escalation of interest rates and the subsequent halt of recovery in the housing market.
While there are a number of guesses as to what the ending of this program—as well as the other government program to help home owners modify their mortgages—will bring about, it is hard to be sure about what the results will be until the programs are actually over and the industry acclimatizes to the change.
It seems rather likely that the weeks leading up to the ending of the programs will show a rise in home sales as buyers race to complete their closings before the programs end; but if the market stalls after that point or not is anyone’s guess. If the government has been successful in convincing investors that mortgage-backed securities are safe to buy again, then it just may be that there isn’t much of a rebound at all in the near future for the housing industry.
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