House-Hunting Homework

Before buying a house in Bethesda last month, Susan Fiorella tapped away on her keyboard. She researched schools. She checked crime statistics. She even solicited opinions about neighborhoods from an e-mail group for urban moms and dads.

“A lot of people don’t need to be as rigorous to develop this kind of comfort level,” said Fiorella, a strategist for a health-care provider and the mother of two young children. “We did exhaustive research; that’s our personality.”

Mortgage rate jump reverses declines

Mortgage rates gained substantially this week, nearly erasing the declines they’ve seen over the last three weeks, Freddie Mac reported Thursday.

The government-sponsored loan buyer said the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate loan rose to 6.73 percent for the week ending July 12, from 6.63 percent the previous week.

Last year at this time, 30-year mortgage rates averaged 6.74 percent.

“A favorable employment report for June and robust consumer credit growth for May pushed long-term mortgage rates higher in the past week, nearly eliminating the declines made in rates over the previous three weeks,” Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac’s (Charts, Fortune 500) chief economist, said in a statement. “In addition, consumer credit jumped by $12.9 billion in May, almost double market expectations.”

Housing slump gets longer, and longer …

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The slump in home sales and prices will be deeper and last longer than previously expected, according to the latest forecast Wednesday by the National Association of Realtors.

The trade group is now looking for flat prices for existing homes in the first quarter of 2008 compared to the first quarter of 2007, and a more year-over-year declines for new home.

The group’s previous monthly forecast had projected that both new and existing home prices would start to rebound to show a year-over-year rise in the first quarter of 2008.

Both new and existing home prices are now expected to show a less than 1 percent gain in the second quarter of next year, according to the latest forecasts. Those increases are less than previously forecast.