With mortgage rates are hovering near all-time lows, lots of Americans are taking advantage of refinance and home buying opportunities. The downside of today’s unexpectedly-low rates, though, is that mortgage lenders are ill-equipped for the rush of new business. As a result, the process of underwriting and approving new mortgage applications is taking some conforming [...]

The stock markets made strong gains last week but the mortgage markets barely moved in the wake of the Treasury’s “toxic asset” plan. After carving out wide trading ranges on most days, mortgage pricing ended the week slightly worse overall. From an economic standpoint, though, last week was an interesting one. Existing home sales showed [...]

If you’re in want of a cash out refinance, the most liberal cash-out program in town is about to make qualification more difficult. Effective April 1, 2009, the FHA is reducing the maximum loan-to-value on cash-out refinances by 10 percent, dropping the loan size limit from 95% of the home’s value to 85%. In its [...]

The national housing market got its third piece of good news in 3 days: Monday: Existing Home Sales up Tuesday: Home values appear higher nationally Wednesday: New Home Sales up And although national real estate statistics are irrelevant to the local markets in which real estate transactions happen, to a country of would-be and wanna-be [...]

Don’t look now but oil prices are climbing. This should worry today’s home buyers and would-be refinancers because some of the same forces that helped to push crude past $50 for the first time in 4 months also cause mortgage rates to rise. March 18, the Federal Reserve committed an additional $1.15 trillion to support [...]

Each month, the National Association of REALTORS® releases a study called the Existing Home Sales report. It’s a detailed look at “used” home sale data from all four regions of the country. Among the key findings of each Existing Home Sales report is something called the “median sales price”, the statistical price point at which [...]

Mortgage markets scored big gains last week, sparked by the Federal Reserve’s pledge to buy $750 billion more mortgage-backed bonds in 2009. Conforming mortgage rates fell on the week, overall. But Federal Reserve intervention wasn’t the only good news for rate shoppers last week. New evidence showed — for the time being, at least — [...]

For the fifth time in a year, rate shoppers learned an important lesson this week: When mortgage rates plummet unexpectedly, they often recover just as fast. Wednesday, the Federal Reserve’s newest $750 billion mortgage market pledge helped to push conforming mortgage rates near their lowest levels since WWII. 24 hours later, however, those rates were [...]

For the fifth time in a year, rate shoppers learned an important lesson this week: When mortgage rates plummet unexpectedly, they often recover just as fast. Wednesday, the Federal Reserve’s newest $750 billion mortgage market pledge helped to push conforming mortgage rates near their lowest levels since WWII. 24 hours later, however, those rates were [...]

The Federal Open Market Committee voted to leave the Fed Funds Rate unchanged today, within the target range of 0.000-0.250 percent. This doesn’t mean the Fed stood pat, however. On plan to resurrect the economy using “all available tools”, today, the Fed announced a new, $1.5 trillion round of fiscal support for the treasury and [...]