Frank Nothaft Percent Quotations

Mortgage rates have been under 7 percent for the past eight weeks,

Over the last couple of years, we've seen many markets with strong home value appreciation. They're up at a considerable pace in many markets across the country, particularly from New England all the way down to Washington, D.C., ... Home values are up in D.C., for example, by over 10 percent over the past year. That means families have built up home equity.

With the unemployment rate at a low of 4.3 percent and mortgage rates remaining at present affordable levels, we expect the housing market to continue to be strong into the coming months.

As a matter of fact, housing directly contributed to real GDP growth of 19 percent in the first quarter of the year and 23 percent in the second quarter. To put this in perspective, this would compare to 17 percent of real GDP growth over all of 2004.

There was no news this week that would drive mortgage rates in one direction or the other. Therefore, mortgage rates didn't have much reason to move a lot, staying below 7 percent for the second week running.

At this time last year, our forecast called for interest rates for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages to exceed six percent by this time this year,

For the past six months, 30-year fixed rate mortgage rates have hovered between 6.75 percent and 7.25 percent. We continue to see a very low mortgage rate environment, and this has played a key role in the high level of housing construction we have witnessed over the last two quarters.