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On January 27, 1956, RCA records released Heartbreak Hotel by a young “Rock and Roll” singer from Tupelo, Mississippi named Elvis Presley. The record sold 300,000 copies in the first three weeks and ultimately became Elvis’ first Gold Record. It is estimated that Elvis Presley has sold more than a billion records worldwide. The other historic event in the mid-fifties? Real Estate mortgage interest rates were lower than they are today. That’s right, you have to go all the way back to the mid 1950s to find a time when mortgage rates were lower than they are right now.

We are living, my friends, in historic times, but there is no guarantee how long rates will stay at these levels. Sooner or later they will have to move up. What does this really mean in actual savings if you were to buy a house at today’s interest rates compared to, oh let’s say, buying a house at the interest rates of 4-7 years ago.

Say someone is buying a house today for the price of $400,000 and putting a 20% down payment. That means they would be putting a down payment of $80,000 and getting a loan of $320,000. Interest rates, while fluctuating somewhat, are mainly hovering right now at about 4 % for a single family residence on a loan of this size. That means a person buying a house in this way at this time would be have a monthly payment, including the monthly setasides for property tax and insurance, of $2027.73

Now, let’s say you were making a purchase of the exact same size with the exact same amount of down payment in 2005. At that time the interest rates were averaging about 6.5%. So, at 6.5%, your monthly payments, again including the monthly setasides for property tax and insurance, would have been $2522.62.

That represents a difference of just about exactly $500/mo or $6,000 / year! You would have spent $42,000 more, out of your pocket, making payments at 6.5 % from 2005 to the present.

This just gives you a sense of what one can save with today’s rates at historic lows.

The other important fact that one should be aware of is that, depending on location and other factors, a house costs approximately 25% less than it did 5 years ago. There is, of course, speculation that house prices could fall even further. That may or may not be the case…. no one really knows for sure. But what we do know for sure is that – right now -one can purchase the average house in the U.S. of A. for 25% less than they could 5 years ago.

These are powerful facts that ought to tell one that if he/she has thought about home ownership and he/she is financially qualified to be a home owner, chances are there has never been a better time to buy a home than right this minute. If anyone wants help making that dream become a reality I and my team will be happy to help them do so.