Yesterday we heard the news that the First Time Homebuyer Tax credit that was slated to expire on November 30th, 2009 is being extended until next spring. Future homeowners need to get under contract before May 1st 2010 to take advantage of the extension. This is great news for realtors, mortgage people and most of all buyers in light of the current low mortgage rates.

As the Dow Jones Industrial Average blew through 10,000 yesterday, investors pulled money out of the safety of Treasury bonds, and into equities. Thus, today's mortgage rates moved up with the Dow.

Wall Street is sending mixed messages this morning. The DOW is down slightly with a worse than expected earnings report from Johnson and Johnson. The yield on the 10 year bond is down from the close on Friday, which has current mortgage rates trending down as well.

Monday the Federal offices and post offices will be closed in celebration of Columbus Day. But, with the exception of the bond market, Wall Street will be up and running as if it was any other weekday of the year. In addition to a plethora of important earnings reports, there is a lot more economic news scheduled for this week that can potentially move the markets.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association the current mortgage rates are officially under 5% with purchase applications jumping 13.2% and refinance applications jumping a whopping 18.2% compared to the previous week’s results. Remember when we are quoting averages of mortgage interest rates, the average usually assumes there is .6 % of an origination point or fee involved.

It was in May of 2009 that the current mortgage rates hit their lowest point in their history reaching to 4.98 percent in the national average. The fall was a remarkable decline from their July 2008 highs. In the past two months the 30-year and 15-year mortgage rates have been going up, but were still at their historic low levels, Now they are heading back to all time lows again.

Freddi Mac's latest survy on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages fell below 5% this week. This is the first time since the end of May, according to Freddie Mac, and closing in on the all-time low set in April.

Freddie Mac this week released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®) in which the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 5.04 percent with an average 0.6 point for the week ending September 24, 2009, unchanged from last week when it averaged 5.04 percent. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 6.09 percent.

As the report showed that the S&P/Case-Shiller Index rebounded yesterday the question about the current mortgage rates intrigued many investors and home buyers. We decided to check the sentiment of today's mortgage rates and see what the online community is saying about the housing and lending.

Current mortgage rates have held steady for most of the year. Earlier this year we saw record setting rates for a fixed term, rates were in the mid 3% range for a 5 year rate. Mortgage ates have come up a bit in the past few months but nothing that was to shocking.

If you haven not noticed adjustable rate mortgages are back. During the last three years even mentioning the term adjustable rate mortgage was almost like using a four letter word. We all have heard the horror stories of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown where innocent homeowners were the victim of massive interest rate fluctuations.

The 30-year fixed mortgage rates remained unchanged from last week. Freddie Mac believes this will continue to spur the economy toward recovery.