Should You Buy a Home Now?
22.05.12
I got my mortgage statement in the mail a few weeks ago. I bought my Portland, Oregon home 10 years ago on a busy street in an up-and-coming neighborhood with what I thought was a super-low interest rate: 5.25%. It was a five-year ARM, meaning that it would stay at 5.25% for five years and then change every year based on some margin over the 10-year treasury rate.
The good news is that it can't move more than one percentage point in either direction, and also cannot move outside a five point range (i.e., it's capped at 10.25%). I could remember my parents, who bought my childhood home in 1978, paying 14% or more. An ARM, I thought, could only get so bad.
Source: Fox Business