Rates Drop Again This Week

According to Freddie Mac's latest data, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.10 percent, down four basis points over the previous week.

The 30-year fixed rate has had only six weekly gains in 2019, and Freddie Mac chief economist Sam Khater recently cut his annual forecast for rate growth, Realtor.com reports. The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.57 percent, down three basis points, and the 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 3.63 percent, down five basis points.

Meanwhile, as the spring season hits its peak, buyer demand has been “going gangbusters” for Rich Harty, a real estate agent in Chicagoland.

In fact, with business so brisk, most of what keeps Harty up at night are the big-picture questions. He’s keeping a close eye on the class-action lawsuit filed against big real-estate companies and the National Association of Realtors, as well as a wave of seismic shifts in the industry that threaten to make real-estate agents redundant.

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