(AP) – Average U.S. rates on fixed mortgages changed little this week and remained slightly above record lows reached earlier this year. The low rates have aided a modest housing recovery.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday the rate on the 30-year loan slipped to 3.55%, down from 3.59% last week. Six weeks ago, the rate fell to 3.49%, the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s.

The average on the 15-year fixed mortgage, a popular refinancing option, was unchanged at 2.86%. That’s above the record low of 2.80% reached six weeks ago.

Cheap mortgages have lifted home sales this year. Sales of newly built and previously occupied homes are well above last year’s levels. Prices have increased consistently, largely because the supply of homes has shrunk while sales have risen. And builder confidence is at its highest level in five years.

Still, the housing market has a long way back to full health. Some economists forecast that sales of previously occupied homes will rise 8% this year to about 4.6 million. That’s well below the 5.5 million annual sales considered healthy. Many people are still having difficulty qualifying for home loans or can’t afford larger down payments required by banks.

Mortgage rates are low because they tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. A weaker U.S. economy and uncertainty about how Europe will resolve its debt crisis have led investors to buy more Treasury securities, which are considered safe investments. As demand for Treasurys increase, the yield falls.

To calculate average rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country on Monday through Wednesday of each week.

The average does not include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1% of the loan amount.

The average fee for 30-year loans was 0.7 point, up from 0.6 point last week. The fee for 15-year loans was unchanged at 0.6 points.

The average rate on one-year adjustable rate mortgages declined to 2.61% from 2.63% last week. The fee for one-year adjustable rate loans was steady at 0.4 points.

The average rate on five-year adjustable rate mortgages fell to 2.75% from 2.78%. The fee edged up to 0.7 points from 0.6.

Small businesses can stand out in a big way with Facebook.

If you’re looking for some creative examples of Facebook pages from the small guys, look no further!

More than 1,800 nominations came in from our contest. These represent over 500 small businesses.

Our panel of Facebook experts carefully reviewed the nominees and finalists, analyzing their landing pages, engagement, reader involvement and creative use of promotions (among other things).

None of these businesses have huge budgets, yet they all have achieved amazing success. The following are the winners of Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Small Business Facebook Pages for 2012:

#1: How to Market Your Horse Business

How to Market Your Horse Business is an award-winning social media marketing company focused on horse businesses and other small businesses.

Fans: 6,628

What the judges liked:

• Amazing engagement
• Good use of pinning and highlighting
• Effective use of contests and spotlighting contest entrants
• Good visual branding with apps and cover photo
• Answers every post
• Publishes a good variety of content

#2: Recruit Military

Recruit Military is a military-to-civilian recruiting firm, helping veterans and transitioning military service members and military spouses find civilian jobs, buy businesses and improve their education.

Fans: 42,022

Twenty years ago when someone was shopping for something, the only available feedback was from friends, family and sales associates. Of course now, everyone turns to Google before they try a new product or service. We search for reviews to see what others are saying. As a blogger, you can capitalize on this.

Writing reviews about affiliate products and services is – in my opinion – the best way for bloggers to make money.

Have a camping blog? Then write reviews about the best camping gear with links to your Amazon affiliate pages. Have a celebrity gossip blog? Then review the latest beauty and fashion products with links to them at Nordstrom and elsewhere. It really doesn’t matter what niche your blog is in, because there are affiliate opportunities for practically everything.

But let’s face it… tons of other bloggers are doing the exact same thing. So how can you make your reviews stand out from the crowd? How can you write reviews that actually convert into commissions? From my experience of running CreditCardForum (a popular blog about credit cards) here are three valuable tips I have to share with you.

1. Get into the nitty-gritty details

As with most things related to banking, credit cards can be extremely lucrative and as a result, you have a lot of people writing about them.  But surprisingly, 90% of what you read about them is utter crap. Most sites just re-word the basic info about a given card and tell you nothing else about it.

On my site, I try to go above and beyond the status quo. While it’s true that I do talk about the basics, I also like to get into some of the in-depth detail that you won’t read about elsewhere. For example in this review of the American Express Gold Card, I explain each and every benefit. Some of the information you won’t even see on AmericanExpress.com, let alone a typical credit card site.

By providing more information than the other guys, your readers will be more confident in their decision to try a product/service.

2. Talk about the good, bad and ugly

Nothing is perfect. We all know this and in turn, you reviews should reflect the pros as well as the cons. Although it may seem counter-intuitive to talk negatively about a product you are selling, readers will appreciate your honesty and will be more trusting of your advice.

A good example of this is my recent blogpost about the American Express Delta. The title is “Delta American Express Card Has Drawbacks, But Still Worth It.” In the review I go over the advantages, followed by the three drawbacks (lack of partner airlines, annual fees, and foreign transaction fees). Yes, those drawbacks will turn off some people from applying for the credit card. But everyone else will say “those things don’t matter to me, so if that’s the worst of it then I still want to apply.”

By telling your readers about the good and bad, they’ll be less likely to wander off and search for more reviews elsewhere. Instead, they’ll feel more confident in making their decision based solely on what you’ve told them. If that decision is a “yes” then they’ll probably be clicking on your affiliate offer and that means money in the bank for you!

In each Economic Update, the Research staff analyzes recently released economic indicators and addresses what these indicators mean for REALTORS® and their clients. Today’s update discusses the Case Shiller price index and consumer confidence.

• Case Shiller price data showed that by all three measures, prices rose at the end of the 2nd quarter. The quarterly national index was up 1.2 percent compared to 2011. The monthly 20-city and 10-city indices were up 0.5 and 0.1 percent, respectively, compared to June 2011.
• These annual increases follow 5 consecutive months of annual house price increases as measured by NAR and the FHFA’s prices.
• What’s notable in this release is the extreme movement month-to-month. Even the seasonally adjusted data rose by 0.9 and 1 percent from June to July for the 20- and 10-city indices, respectively. If this pace were to continue, that would mean 11 to 13 percent annual increases in prices among the 20- and 10-city indices.
• Drilling down further, we see that seasonally adjusted prices rose by 3.6 percent in Detroit, 2.3 percent in Atlanta, and 1.6 percent in Phoenix from June to July. If that pace of increase were to be sustained, price growth in these cities would easily exceed 20 percent in a single year.
• Whether or not that pace is sustained (and given the variability in the data it will likely not be), today’s data clearly show that a sharp-turnaround in housing is underway across the U.S., with particular strength in markets that had been hit hard.
• Separately, consumer confidence data took a negative turn in August. While consumer assessment of current conditions was largely unchanged, consumer expectations dropped notably to the lowest level since November 2011. This data can be an indicator of consumer spending, and somewhat offsets the positive home price news.

Here is the latest 2012 Economic and Housing Outlook from NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. The full 15-slide PowerPoint looks at economic indicators such as existing home sales, new home sales, housing starts, GDP, payroll jobs and more. The Summary Forecast Table is also pasted below.

Link to the full PDF can be found here.

In each Economic Update, the Research staff analyzes recently released economic indicators and addresses what these indicators mean for REALTORS® and their clients. Today’s update discusses jobless claims.

• Initial claims for unemployment insurance for the week ending August 25 remained unchanged at 374,000 from the previous week. Meanwhile, the total number of the insured unemployed or those with continuing claims has also stabilized at about 3.3 million.
• A normal figure for first-time filers for unemployment checks would be about 350,000 per week. There are people getting laid off even in good economic times. So the recent week’s figures imply moving quite close to normal. However, as everyone knows, the job market is far from normal. A good mental visual is to think of newly unemployed filing for jobless benefits as the water flow from a faucet, with the water level of the bathtub as the total number of people without a job, including those who cannot receive unemployed checks . The flow has been trickling down closer to normal, but the water level of the unemployed still remains very high.

• According to the Department of Labor, which compiles the data, the largest increases in initial claims were in Michigan (+2,383), Florida (+1,558), Colorado (+781), South Carolina (+774), and Texas (+517), while the largest decreases were in California (-5,549), Ohio (-1,379), Oregon (-1,098), Wisconsin (-539), and Virginia (-480).