Are you one of those buyers that keeps waiting for interest rates to drop and housing prices to plumbit? Do you keep listening to the media's "gloom and doom" about the real estate market, and think that this is the truth in ALL markets?

I'm sorry to tell you that you may have already missed the boat. In reality, interest rates, for our area, hit their lowest back in January, and have been climbing progressively every since. If you take a look at the chart to the left (provided by Bankrate.com), you can see the progress rates have made in the past year.

Last week, it was announced that FreddieMac and FannieMae (the two largest lenders in the U.S. secondary mortgage market, which help to replenish the supply money for mortgages and enable money to be available for housing purchases) are in financial trouble. What does this mean for the average home buyer? It means that in order to balance out the weight of the sub-prime lending fiasco and years of historicly low interest rates, the rates are going to have to go up.

To show you a good example, on Monday (July 14th) the interest rate for a local lender here in Picayune, MS, on a $200,000 loan was 6.00%. On Tuesday it went up to 6.125%, and by Friday (July 18th) it was 6.375%. That may not sound like much, but the difference of these rates means almost $50 more per month in a mortgage payment.

Now how does that affect our market? Buyers are going to be more active because of the fear of higher rates, and will make a move on the houses that meet their needs and fit their budget. More houses will be sold, and the available inventory will start to dwindle.

There are many buyers in the market that have been slow to make decisions because they felt they could get a better deal, or wait for house prices to drop further. If you are one of those buyers, you might want to reconsider this stance and look for the right home in your price range now, before that home is either gone or the price increases because of demand.