First Time Home Buyers
From the monthly archives: January 2010
After last month’s surge on the November data, December’s Existing Home Sales dropped sharply–nearly 17 percent and a hitting a 4-month low.
Still, it wasn’t a complete surprise.
Continue Reading →First time home buyers win on the latest Existing Home Sales report. The reason is very simple: We’re going on nearly a year where the housing information was generally positive. We’re hearing more about multiple offer situations and seeing more competition for the most desirable homes.
Continue Reading →Stocks are recovering slightly this morning after a miserable week last week and it’s caused rates to drift only slightly higher. On this week’s mortgage rate predictions, we are focused on one thing: Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee press release.
There are big reports on housing, consumer confidence and GDP hits Friday, but in [...]
Continue Reading →The biggest news of the week is the first Federal Open Market Committee meeting of 2010.
The Fed meets Tuesday and Wednesday, wrapping up with two main mortgage rate driving events:
Fed Funds Rate – It is near-consensus that the target will remain in the 0.000-0.250 percent range. Policy [...]
Continue Reading →Mortgage rates improved last week as money poured out of the stock market. The S&P dropped 4% in its worst week since October 2009.
This week looks to be extremely volatile.
Continue Reading →We’ve been seeing it here and the recent Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) survey shows that refinance activity is spiking on these lower mortgage rates. For the week ending last Friday, January 15, the refinance index was up 10%. Rates have improved this week so we could be seeing another surge as rates dip below [...]
Continue Reading →A “Housing Start” is a privately-owned home on which construction has started. It’s an important gauge of housing health becuase it forecasts future housing supply.
Continue Reading →“Housing Starts” are privately-owned homes on which construction has started. It is a very important measurement because it forecasts the supply of new homes in the future.
Continue Reading →Mortgage bonds opened the day slightly lower negating yesterday’s rally. Mortgage rates opened right at yesterday’s levels.
Since then, stocks have started out on another bad day and the mortgage bond market has rallied about 25-30 basis points since pricing came out. We have not yet seen any reprices, or revised rate sheets, from the [...]
Continue Reading →FHA Home Loan Approval Changes
Securing an FHA mortgage is about to get both more expensive and more difficult.
The policy statement hit yesterday and the Federal Housing Authority outlined policy changes to its mortgage assistance program.
Continue Reading →