When my husband and I bought our first house, we had to come up with about $8,000 for a down-payment and our interest rate – with great credit – was 8 percent.  We went from renting a duplex for $325 per month to a house payment of about $750 every month.

At today’s rates, the house payment would be about $510 per month (and that includes insurance and taxes)!  Florida agent Marco Giancola also recalls the days of high interest rates when he bought his first home,

It all hit me about a month later as I wrote the check for the first mortgage payment and discovered the interest rate was 18%. This memory popped into my head as I read that Freddie Mac announced on Thursday that the mortgage rates ticked up to 4 percent from 3.99 percent on a 30 year loan. Six weeks ago, it dropped to a record low of 3.94 percent, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

If you can qualify for a home loan, have good job security, a good down payment (and we’ve said this before here at the Shak), NOW is the time to buy!