There's more evidence that buyers who'd been sitting on the sidelines are now jumping into the housing market: The Mortgage Bankers Association of America reports that in its national survey last week, applications for new, conventional loans to buy houses jumped by eleven percent -- and applications for FHA insured mortgages were up by seventeen percent!

In a week when all the real estate news attention was focused on rising foreclosures, the mortgage bankers' encouraging numbers pretty much got drowned out.

But rising loan applications for purchases over the past several weeks point to a trend that shouldn't be ignored: With home prices sharply discounted in many of the former high-flying boom markets, and down slightly in many other areas, smart buyers are recognizing that it's time to make their move.

Take the west coast of Florida and Orlando, for example. Robert Toll, the president of Toll Brothers, the high-end national home builder active on the southwest Gulf Coast, was reported as saying that, in his view, the worst is pretty much over.

His company's unsold inventories are declining in that part of Florida, and there's even been a slight increase in prices in a few areas. Existing home sales are up in Orlando, Sarasota, and Bradenton, among others.

Scattered reports of upturns in sales and prices are also starting to pop up in some Zip codes in southern California and Arizona.

Now, we're not prepared to go out on a limb and say the housing recovery is underway and let's break out the bubbly.

BUT you've GOT to admit that something is stirring out there.

Otherwise, what are people doing with all those applications to buy houses?

Sure, some of them are buying foreclosed and bank-owned real estate. But what do you expect after three years of a sharp down cycle?

They're picking up bargains from what's left over after the bust. No surprise there.

But here's a little advice: Keep your eyes on mortgage rates. The mortgage bankers association reported a sudden jump in rates last week -- they're now up to six and a quarter percent for thirty year fixed and five point eight percent for fifteen years. Those are nearly the highest numbers since last Fall.

The Federal Reserve is signaling that it's worried about inflation -- the Consumer Price Index took a jump last week as well -- and the Fed may not cut rates again for a long time.

If you're thinking about picking up steeply-discounted real estate and financing it with cut-rate mortgage money -- you just might want to lock in your deals sooner, rather than later.

Published: June 19, 2008

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Kenneth R. Harney writes an award-winning, nationally-syndicated column on housing and real estate from Washington, D.C. He is also managing director of the National Real Estate Development Center, a professional education company. He is a past member of the Federal Reserve Board's Consumer Advisory Council, a committee that by federal statute reviews all Fed actions on home mortgage, consmer credit and banking industry regulation. He served as a member of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Working Group on Computerized Loan Origination (CLO) systems, and is a member of the Editorial Board of the Fannie Mae Foundation's journal, Housing Policy Debate. He is the author of two books on mortgage finance and real estate.