Take the Good with the Bad?

Unfortunately, the last week or so has not been very kind to your retirement fun or investment portfolio. The stock market has been...shaky at best - mainly based on economic uncertainty in Europe - but on the flip side, mortgage rates have been going down too.

Rates are the lowest they've been since June of 2013, many below 4%! A lot of people are taking advantage of these low rates, but it might not be spurring on NEW sales as much as you'd think.

According to an article on CNBC.com, "The surge was all in refinance applications, which jumped 11 percent week-to-week, but which are still off 27 percent from one year ago...Lower rates, however, did nothing to spur mortgage activity among potential home buyers. Mortgage applications to purchase a home actually fell one percent."

Money is cheap, as they say, but people are still taking their time making the jump to buy a home. There have been plenty of studies on the "Millenial" generation taking longer to settle down than previous generations, but we'll leave that to another post. On a local level, we're still dealing with extremely low inventory. There just aren't enough good houses on the market for all the buyers.

If you've been thinking about buying or refinancing, it's truly a great time to buy and a great time to refinance if you haven't in the last few years. Your stocks may be down, but as they say in Monty Python, "always look on the bright side of life" and take advantage of these low mortgage rates!