First Time Home Buyers
From the monthly archives: November 2009
Mortgage rates deteriorated slightly last week, largely bouncing around on conflicting data.
Continue Reading →This is almost getting boring were it not for half of Chicago refinancing right now. Mortgage rates are still improving.
Current interest rates
No Origination Fees or Origination Points On These Rates, Read Assumptions for Full Details. 30 Year Fixed Rate Discount Points APR 4.500% 1.30% 4.676% 4.625% 0.72% 4.752% 4.750% 0.15% 4.830% 20 Year [...]
Continue Reading →Historical spreads can be important when looking at the best loan product.
Continue Reading →This really has been an incredible run over the past month. Rates have dipped almost half a percent and have retraced their lows from October. Perhaps even more important, many homeowners locked out of the original refinance wave due to declining home values have options now in the form of the making home affordable options [...]
Continue Reading →A “Housing Start” indicated a home where construction has started and, for the 4th straight month, national single-family housing starts held steady last month.
This is great news for home sellers.
Continue Reading →Chicago Refinancing Activity Drives Applications
The Mortgage Bankers Association report shows that the refinances were up 1.4% last week and increased to nearly 73% of loan applications last week. The 30 Fixed Rate came in at an average of 4.83% with 1.17% points. We’re still seeing lower rates than that here, but the national levels [...]
Continue Reading →Update: See the 2011 Conforming Loan Amounts
A conforming mortgage is one that meets the guidelines set forth by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. This maximum allowable loan size for a conforming mortgage is based on “typical” housing costs nationwide.
Loans in excess of this amount are typically called “jumbo” and carry higher [...]
Continue Reading →Home loan rates continue to drop. We have every reason in the world to believe that they will jump in the next few days, minutes, or hours, but that hasn’t been the case just yet.
Today’s big number was the inflation measure, the Producer Price Index. It came in significantly lower than expected. This removes [...]
Continue Reading →APR is an acronym for Annual Percentage Rate. It’s a government-mandated calculation meant to simplify the comparison of mortgage options.
A loan’s APR can always be found in the top-left corner of the Federal Truth-In-Lending Disclosure.
Because APR is expressed as a percentage, many people confuse it for the home loan’s interest rate.
Continue Reading →Interest rates hit a four-week low last week and had their third consecutive week in a downward trend. We’ve seen plenty of these this year. Rates jog lower, sprint higher.
Current Chicago Loan Rates No Origination Fees or Origination Points On These Rates, Read Assumptions for Full Details. 30 Year Fixed Rate Discount Points APR [...]
Continue Reading →