[Renee Montagne:] Meanwhile, mortgage rates for 30-year fixed loans have fallen to 5.29 percent. That's created a mortgage boomlet. NPR's Yuki Noguchi has more.
[Yuki Noguchi:] This holiday shopping season, the hot item is mortgage rates.
[Keith Gumbinger:] We reckon that to be approaching 50-year lows for conforming 30-year fixed rate mortgage money.
[Yuki Noguchi:] So says Keith Gumbinger. He's vice president of HSH Associates, a mortgage analytics company. He says refinancing applications tripled the week of Thanksgiving.
[Keith Gumbinger:] The industry is frankly unprepared for it.
[Yuki Noguchi:] After all, mortgage-related employment has dropped by nearly a third since its peak in 2006. So some companies, including Bank of America, have shifted their workforce to help with the crush. Others have hired back some workers part-time, but not everyone will be locking in at these lower rates.
[Keith Gumbinger:] For certain audiences, this is a historic kind of opportunity. For others, they simply shrug their shoulders and turn away.
[Yuki Noguchi:] Those who are turning away include people whose homes are worth less than their loan amounts; They can't refinance. Also the rate on jumbo loans, which are loans over $417,000, remains over six percent. Another group is also absent so far from this recent boom, home buyers. But that could change, says Orawin Velz, vice president of economic forecasting for the Mortgage Bankers Association.
[Orawin Velz:] You have home prices declining, and you have mortgage rates that are declining as well. So there will be some people that could see very attractive affordability.
[Yuki Noguchi:] But don't look for an uptake in home sales to start happening, she says, until after the after-Christmas sales. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News.