To take advantage of near-record low mortgage interest rates and home prices undervalued by as much as three percent nationwide, now is a great time to buy a home.

You’ve already missed the bottom of the market, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t great buys to be had out there. Your community may not have appreciated as quickly as some of the big metro areas have recently. Your boom may yet come.

But there are even better reasons to buy a home right now. Here are just a few:

More jobs are available – The Labor Department announced that the jobless rate is now below six percent. Consider how far the job market has come since January 2010 when unemployment was 9.7 percent.

Houses hedge against inflation -The Consumer Price for All Urban Consumers is up 1.7% from August 2013 to August 2014, excluding volatile food and gas prices. The food index has risen 2.7 percent over the span, while the energy index has increased 0.4 percent. This is the first month that the index hasn...

Regulators who oversee Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration are telling mortgage lenders that they’re ready to cut them some slack, and mortgage lenders say they’re ready to run with the ball.

Speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual convention, Mel Watt — who runs Fannie and Freddie’s regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency — said a pact with the mortgage giants to be unveiled in coming weeks should ease many of the fears lenders have about extending credit to riskier borrowers.

“We know that this issue has contributed to lenders imposing credit overlays that drive up the cost of lending and also restrict lending to borrowers with less-than-perfect credit scores or with less conventional financial situations,” Watt said Sunday in a speech to bankers.

Watt confirmed media reports that FHFA has reached an agreement with Fannie and Freddie on revising the representation and warranty requirements, and...

Mortgage rates for 30-year fixed mortgages fell this week, with the current rate borrowers were quoted on Zillow Mortgages at 3.81 percent, down from 3.96 percent at this same time last week.

The 30-year fixed mortgage rate dropped Wednesday, then hovered around 3.88 percent for most of the week before falling to the current rate.

“Rates dropped to the lowest level since June 2013 on news that the Federal Reserve has more reservations about the health of the U.S. and global economy than expected, which in turn, may delay rate hikes,” said Erin Lantz, vice president of mortgages at Zillow. “With little economic news planned to overshadow the Fed’s latest comments, this week we expect rates to fairly remain stable, hovering just shy of 4 percent.”

Additionally, the 15-year fixed mortgage rate this morning was 2.96 percent, and for 5/1 ARMs, the rate was 2.70 percent.

(Source: Zillow Blog, Lauren Braun) – click here to learn more.