Source: Yahoo! News —
A few weeks ago, Sean Dycus thought he spied the window to snatch a lower mortgage rate than the 8% he got saddled with in December when he bought an investment home in South Carolina for $450,000.
“I got an offer that would lower my rate by almost a percent and a half,” Dycus, who works with Mainstreet Properties, told Yahoo Finance. “I thought about it, sat down and did the numbers. Then rates went up again.”
That’s the fast-changing rate environment last year’s homebuyers face as they hope to shed the much higher-than-expected mortgage rate they were forced to swallow in 2022 in order to close on a home.
“I knew rates were high when I bought, but I also knew that I wasn’t going to get a perfect deal again,” Dycus said, noting he got a 20% price discount on the property. “I thought, I’ll just suck it up and refi when it’s time to refi.”
The rate, which began a downward trajectory in January, was a whisker away from dropping below 6% at the start of February, perking up refinance activity then. For instance, the volume of refinance applications increased 15% for the week ending Jan. 20, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association survey.