By Marie Brown

SACRAMENTO (OBSNews.com) - Home mortgage rates across the United States have continued their fall but unemployment numbers are persistently tough here in Sacramento, and elsewhere, and because of the lack of jobs there are fewer house shoppers in the marketplace. On Thursday mortgage giant Freddie Mac published numbers that showed the average 30 year fixed rate mortgage dropped from 4.49% a week ago to 4.44%.

Freddie Mac has been keeping these records since 1971 and, according to Freddie’s chief economist Frank Nothaft, "Interest rates for fixed mortgages and five-year hybrid ARMs again broke record lows this week following reports of a sluggish job market."

The 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) averaged 3.56 percent. The 15-year fixed rate mortgage this week also averaged a new record low of 3.92 percent.

Part of the problem say industry watchers is that banks are applying increasingly stringent lending standards to borrowers in the Sacramento real estate market especially because of the 12.5% unemployment rate the state’s capital is suffering from. Coupling that with insecurity for state workers and the prospects of more state imposed furloughs, consumers have some good reasons to be cautious.

But, that caution does not mean that there are not a lot of great deals out there. According to local Sacramento real estate broker, Patrick McGilvray, President of www.TheHomeBuyingCenter.com, “For all of our clients and prospective clients we are telling them that the deals are out there and the rates are incredibly low. Many families are coming together to share resources and get good loans and good homes at a record convergence of low prices for the house itself and the money to buy it.”

Freddie’s economist Nothaft also commented, "Low rates are helping to heal many battered local housing markets by increasing home-purchase activity. The National Association of Realtors®, www.Realtor.org, reported that 65 percent of the 155 metropolitan areas they track experienced yearly increases in the second quarter of this year. This compares to 60 percent of areas in the first quarter and only 44 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009."