Here’s one more reason for homebuyers to make every effort to qualify for a mortgage right now. Home prices, in terms of actual monthly mortgage payments made by home owners, are cheaper today than they have been for more than 25 years, according to a recent analysis of Case-Shiller home values and mortgage rates by the Department of Numbers web site.
The site calculated the cost of a actual monthly payments on a 30-year mortgage at prevailing historic mortgage rates to finance the purchase of a home at Case-Shiller’s media price levels since the series began in the late 1980s. Even though real house prices peaked at the beginning of 2006 and are now back to early 1999 (and before that mid 1990) levels, today’s record low mortgage rates make monthly mortgage payments lower today than they have been since the Case-Shiller index came into being.
