After bouncing around a bit post Wednesday’s Fed meeting minutes reading, there is currently a 28% chance that the Open Market Committee will raise their rates next month.  Remember that a short-term hike doesn’t necessarily translate to long-term rates going up.  Case in point, when they increased the Fed rate a quarter percent last December, mortgage rates actually dropped a half point.  Sometimes you don’t get everything you expect.

With interest rates continuing to be near record-low levels, the percentage of home buyers paying all cash has now dropped to an eight year low at 35.6%.  I couldn’t be happier.  More than 5.45 million existing homes have been sold over the last 12 months, resulting in 3.5 million sets of loan documents.  That’s over a half billion signatures; there must be a better way.