Unfortunately it's time for me to write one of my boring statistical posts..... so I'll step out of character and keep it brief, or at least try too... 

I'm a numbers guy, numbers don't lie. If you can see the patterns in them and connect the dots you can find the answers to some very interesting things...or even find an answer to something you never thought to ask!

  This evening I was just browsing through the monthly market report published by my local Orlando Association of Realtors when I happened to scroll down past the first page to see the graph below.

  You can see it charts average monthly mortgage rates going back 3 years...and the pattern is pretty easy to distinguish (mortgage rates are relatively a national market with little variance from state to state, so this applies to more than just my market here in Orlando). Notice what happens to the mortgage rates from October to January EVERY year? Rates have dropped practically 1 FULL percent from peak to bottom every year around the holidays! Translated into money savings, a 200K mortgage at 6.5% is $1264/mo, that same mortgage at 5.5% is $1135/mo or $46,440 in lower payments over the life of the mortgage!

  Supply and Demand I think runs the show yet again when explaining this phenomenon. Mortgages are basically just money, and there is a fixed supply of people that are lending it (for the most part) and lending money doesn't stop just because it's the holidays or because it's cold outside. However buying and selling homes DOES. For you poor people up in the snow states I imagine it takes some motivation to get out on an icy day just to check out some houses, and I'm sure a lot of sellers take their homes off the market during the winter as well. Down here in the sunbelt our selling season is year round....but when there are holiday's every other week with family and friends coming to visit and get away from the cold, house hunting tends to take a back seat. Basically what I'm saying is there is a drop in demand for mortgages as people purchase fewer homes from October-January. Drop in demand with a stable supply of money means money gets CHEAPER; you can borrow at less cost (interest).

  So, in short, if you have the time and determination to buy a home when no one else is....save yourself a nice bit of dough and shop the last 3 months of the year. ;)