Fed's Move to Lower Mortgage Rates May Backfire On Market

CNBC

The Federal Reserve's latest moves to push down mortgage rates quickly raised expectations about helping the housing recovery, but it may be months before the impact is entirely apparent and the effects may not all be positive, say people in the real estate and housing industries.

First and foremost, there is general skepticism about the how much impact government intervention will have in the marketplace, as well as concern about the potential for unintended consequences.

"It's wrong to place too much hope on what the Fed would be able to accomplish in pushing rates lower," says economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "There's a limit to what they can realistically do."

That's apparent in what some call the inevitable bounce back in rates since the Fed's announcement at the March 19 FOMC meeting that it would increase its planned purchase of GSE and MBS debt as well as finally begin buying longer-term Treasuries.

The yield on the 10-year note went from roughly 3.00 percent down to 2.50 percent, but has slowly climbed back to around 2.75 percent. Thirty-year mortgage rates, which track the 10-year yield, have moved accordingly.

"Rates are historically low, but the expectation is that interest rates should be much lower than they are," says Manhattan Mortgage Company CEO Melissa Cohn.

That sort of criticism highlights the difficulty of the Fed's mission, and though the significant drop in mortgage rates in the past six months has been welcome in almost all quarters, it is hardly a magic bullet for the multi-faceted housing market

For one, Cohn and others have seen a greater increase in refinancing activity that in loans for home sales.

The Mortgage Bankers Association last week increased its forecast for loan originations in 2009 by 40 percent to $2.8 trillion, more than any year since 2005 and the fourth highest on record. Some 71-percent of that, however, will be refinancing. Home purchase origination's will be almost 4-percent lower than last year.

"For the purchase market, it is still an issue of the economy," says Jay Brinkman, chief economist and senior vice president of the mortgage industry trade group. "I don't think rates were an impediment even before the Fed's move."
Refinancing does not a housing rebound make, although it certainly increases the chance of keeping a homeowner out of foreclosure. That and other forces continue to put a drag on housing.
Right now, the single-family market is still in the doldrums, though many measures point to a possible bottom.

Thus far this year, existing single-family homes are off an average of 6 percent from 2008 and prices are down 15 percent from the previous year, according to the National Association of Realtors.

On the bright side, inventory has been below a 10-month supply for three months and the NAR's affordability index now stands at a whopping 175 vs. a meager 107 in 2006, when house prices peaked in most parts of the country.

According to NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun, every 1-percent decline in mortgage rates typically generates an additional 500,000 home sales.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage was more than 6-percent in the fall of 2008, while last week it was as low as 4.85 percent, according to Freddie Mac, so that could mean a lot of sales in the pipeline.