Andrew and Peggy Sheren can’t resist a good deal, especially when it comes to financing their McLean, Virginia home.

“We’ve gone from an interest rate from something like greater than 6 percent down to the lowest interest rate we currently have is three and an eighth percent,” Andrew remembers. They have refinanced their home four times in four years, taking equity out only the first time for a renovation, but essentially cutting their interest rate in half.

Negative economic reports of late have pushed the rate on the popular 30 year fixed to below 4.5 percent, the lowest this year and just about a quarter percent off the 50-year lows we saw last summer; adjustable-rate products are even lower. When investors see bad economic news, they pull money out of the stock market and park it in bonds. The price of bonds goes up, the yield goes down, and mortgage rates follow down.

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I don’t know what the official end of the Spring housing market is, but it seems as if the experts have called the close, and it ain’t great.

Last week, after the folks at the vaunted SP/Case Shiller Indices put a period on the home price double dip, which others had been reporting for months — and The New York Times did a piece on falling home prices — it seemed like suddenly the housing watchers got nervous again.

Over the weekend, JP Morgan Chase’s housing analysts revised their outlook lower for home price recovery, “largely based on existing home sales coming in lower than expected.” While they expect that regional divergences will increase, “Our new base case is down percent from here (Q1 2011) and bottoming in mid-2012. We expect home prices to modestly improve over the summer months.”

Soon after, Credit Suisse’s Monthly Survey of Real Estate Agents announced: “Weak ending to the Spring season.” CS’s Daniel Oppenheim notes, “A lack of urgency continues as does a fear and hesitation of buying if prices still have further to fall.” This, we knew.

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