Buyers.COLOhomefinder.com

Lane Hornung, co-founder and CEO of 8z Real Estate and COhomefinder.com recently spoke with John Rebchook, the writer of Inside Real Estate news about interest rates and home prices. For those who are looking to buy a home, whatever the motivation, but are hesitating to make that purchase, this is the insight for you. If you're a move up buyer with equity in your home, but feel that perfect home may still dip a bit in price, here's some further insight as well for timing your home purchase.

“The most dominant factor if are you are buying today is the impact of rising interest rates,” not a major, sustained drop in housing prices.

A rule of thumb is that a home has to drop by 10 percent to make up a 1-percentage point increase in interest rates. In other words, if you want that $400,000 home at the same monthly payment at 6.25 percent as at 5.25 percent, the seller must shave $40,000 off the price and sell it for $360,000.

The numbers bear that out. If you made a 20 percent down payment – $80,000 on a $400,000 home – the monthly principal and interest payment on the $320,000 loan is $1,767 with a 5.25-percent, 30-year mortgage. Jack-up the rate to 6.25 percent and the payment jumps to $1,970 on the $320,000 mortgage.

In order to get the same monthly payment with a 6.25 percent mortgage, the seller needs to drop the price of a home by 10 percent to $360,000. Again, if the buyer puts down 20 percent – $72,000 on the smaller loan- the monthly P&I payment would be $1,773 at a 6.25 percent, 30-year mortgage. So a rate increase of one percentage point is basically a wash if home prices drop a corresponding 10 percent.

But what a qualified, prospective buyer needs to consider is how likely it is that home prices will drop another10 percent to offset a one basis point (one percentage point) increase, if it should occur.

“If somebody asked me to bet $1,000 on the odds of interest rates going up one point or homes decreasing in value by 10 percentage in the next year, I would take the bet on rates rising,” Hornung said.

While there is a strong correlation between rates and prices – rising interest rates will cause sales to go down, Hornung said, but that can be offset by other factors.

Hornung noted that the latest Case-Shiller/Fiserv projection is that many parts of the metro area, including Fort Collins area and Boulder counties, will return to their peak prices in less than two years.

“If prices do fall a bit, and even if we double dip, it will be a mere blip,” Hornung said, at least in much of the Denver metro area.

Also, according to the latest research from National Association of Realtors, the typical buyer plans to own their home for the next 10 years, almost 43 percent higher than the seven years that historically was the amount of time a homeowner stayed in a home before selling.

“If you’re buying a home as a life-enhancement and not as an investment, and you overlay that on a 10-year ownership horizon, and if we are not at the bottom, we are pretty close to the bottom, it says to me that your real risk is rising rates. My advice is that you just have to be aware that there is a risk of waiting.”

Lane said if he had to choose between super-low interest rates and a bad economy, and relatively low interest rates and a better economy, he would always choose the latter scenario.

“We can have a very healthy real estate market with 6 percent interest rates,” Hornung said.

For more from the interview with Lane Hornung read the article by John Rebchook on Inside Real Estate News