The U.S. Treasury continues to need massive amounts of capital to fund our various government programs as they recently redeemed over $596 billion in short term Treasury Bills for the month of April alone. This is an all-time world record amount for one single month. If you add in an additional $47 billion in longer term Treasury Notes, the amount rises closer to $650 billion.

Thirty (30) year fixed mortgage rates are tied to the direction of the 10 year Treasury Bond yield. With less demand from Treasury Bond buyers, the yields should then begin to rise which should also parallel the increase in longer term 30 year fixed mortgage rates.

In theory, current thirty (30) year mortgage rates should be much higher than the approximate 5% to 5.5% conforming mortgage rates right now. However, rates continue to be artificially low due to both the almost record low short term rates via the Federal Reserve's lending and investment actions to date.

It seems to me that thirty (30) year rates may be on an upward trend in the near term. Should that happen, then it may hinder real estate values even more in both the near and long term. It may make more sense to refinance sooner rather than later in order to lock into these artificially low rates as the Treasury borrowing continues to escalate.