With another year closing out, buyers and sellers should be thinking about what's ahead for 2016 with mortgage rates, especially given the Fed's recent move to increase a key interest rate.
The answer is, rates shouldn't budge very much. This year the average fixed-rate 30-year mortgage was 4.4 percent, marking the sixth year running where those rates have been below 5 percent, historically low.
But since the financial crisis and tight mortgage standards that came with it, the market has seen a gradual loosening for mortgages, though still nothing close to the easy standards of the housing bubble. That should continue to loosen a bit, though, as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac allow down payments as low as 5 percent, or even 3 percent under certain circumstances.
The Chicago Tribune has more here.