Don’t look now, but mortgage rates have been rising fast (well, OK, look).

After hovering around 5 percent for most of the last few months, the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has spiked to about 5.7 percent since the end of May. That’s nationwide. Here in St. Louis, they’re up to about 5.6 percent, according to Bankrate.com.

Does this pose a risk to the slowly reviving housing market? Or will the “green shoots” we’re seeing in the economy these days (which many say are the cause of the higher rates), give home buyers enough confidence to buy anyways? Rates are still pretty low by historical standards.

What do you think?

P. S. I’m newly a-Twitter, and will be posting Building Blocks entries and other stories over there now, too. If you want to follow along, my handle is tlwriter.