Mortgage rates will remain low, getting a home loan will continue to take a long time and refinancers will be tempted by zero-closing-cost mortgages. Those are some of the trends that mortgage industry insiders predict as the year ends. Here are their predictions. Mortgage rates will stay low.

Mortgage rates have dipped to modern record lows this fall. In the spring, economists had been warning that rates would be rising by now. At the end of March, the Federal Reserve wrapped up an initiative to drive down mortgage rates by buying $1.25 trillion worth of mortgage-backed securities. The consensus throughout the mortgage industry was that rates would increase steadily through the end of this year.Instead, mortgage rates fell steadily through the summer and into the fall. Now, with the Fed announcing it will buy $600 billion in Treasury securities through the second quarter of next year, speculation is that rates will remain low.......Andrew Alfonso!800 813 3291