U.S. mortgage rates are the lowest in at least four decades, with a 30-year fixed loan available at 4.09 percent. That didn’t help Alexis Wolf buy a town home in Beaverton, Ore. “Unless you have family help, you’re stuck renting,” said Wolf, 26, a real estate broker who turned to relatives for a loan because she didn’t have the credit and employment history needed to qualify for a mortgage. Wolf’s experience illustrates the predicament for Federal Reserve policy makers as they end a two-day meeting today to consider ways to boost economic growth. Low interest rates, the traditional medicine for a flagging economy, aren’t helping housing, which since 1982 has aided every recovery except the current one.
Fed has few tools to fix economy weakened by housing market
September 21, 2011, 12:48pm
Jason Philyaw was a reporter with HousingWire through mid-2012.see full bio
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Jason Philyaw was a reporter with HousingWire through mid-2012.see full bio
