Good news on the way for new home buyers!!!

Treasury Secretary Paulson is said to be considering a plan to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to push down mortgage rates for new home purchases to as low as 4.5%. I heard this on NPR's marketplace yesterday while coming back from the work. Excerpts from that story:

Treasury Department is thinking about trying to get mortgage rates down quite a bit to 4.5 percent. The concept is to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are there, to bring capital to the housing market and to use the Treasury, working with Fannie and Freddie, to get the rates down lower. This program is for new buyers of homes that are on the market. It wouldn't do anything for people who want to refinance to get out from under mortgages they can't get afford anymore. It wouldn't help the foreclosures. But it will indirectly help it because part of the problem is that people who can't make payments on their loans, can't sell their homes either. So if we expand the home ownership base and some of those homes that have no choice but to go into foreclosure, they can be sold.