Foster Weeks publishes a weekly mortgage report which is updated every Monday morning. How is this affecting the San Francisco real estate market? Read our weekly and monthly market reports. Here’s what Mr. Weeks says about last week’s activity:

“A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION…BUT DON’T PUSH YOUR LUCK.” Barbra Streisand obviously wasn’t singing about Bond prices or interest rates in her 1980′s song. But those lyrics were fitting last week when the Federal Reserve stepped in with more buying of Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), helping Bond prices recover from news of a weak Treasury Auction. Overall, home loan rates bounced around last week and ended the week very slightly improved.

But that said, we can’t “push our luck” and think the Fed will continue to step in and help support home loan rates…we have to remember that the Fed is actually winding down exactly this type of buying support.

As you can see from the chart below, the Federal Reserve’s purchases of MBS peaked at an average of $25 Billion per week back in May – and they are getting closer every day to being done spending their allotment of $1.25 Trillion. Since they announced that their remaining purchases would be rationed out until the end of March 2010 – but that they wouldn’t be making any additional purchases beyond the original commitment – the average purchases per week have been moving lower, down to $14 Billion per week so far in November.

Read the entire article and see the graphs here.

- Foster Weeks