First Time Home Buyers
From the monthly archives: May 2010
Mortgage rates dropped to their lowest levels of the year last week. The debt problems in Greece continued to bubble all week. With each blip of bad news, more money came into US markets as investors sought safety.
Continue Reading →What a bad time for a website migration. Here’s what happened: The EU stumbled to the brink of disaster, then back, and then back to the brink of disaster. Ultimately it played out with the European Central Bank outsourcing the clean up to the IMF. IMF is code for “a lot of US Taxpayer money.” [...]
Continue Reading →Shopping for mortgage rates takes more than good research skills. It takes a little bit of luck, too.
Continue Reading →Mortgage markets improved to their best levels of 2010 last week, aided by events half a world away and ongoing safe haven buying. Greece’s debt problems continue to help mortgage rate shoppers around the country.
Continue Reading →Despite 290,000 jobs created in April 2010 — nearly twice the expected amount — and a 40 percent upward revision of March’s numbers, mortgage rates are essentially unchanged. In a normal environment, rates would be higher. Today is not normal.
Continue Reading →The Federal Reserve says that financial markets “remain supportive of economic growth”. Residential mortgage guidelines, however, continue to tighten. If you’ve applied for a home loan recently, you probably felt it; extra scrutiny on income, assets and credit scores, among other things. The hard proof of the changes, however, can be found in the Federal Reserve’s quarterly survey of its member banks.
Continue Reading →Today’s home buyers should consider making offer sooner rather than later. Looking at the data, it appears the best time to have found a “deal” on a home may have been in February.
Continue Reading →For the first time this year, Fannie Mae announced significant updates to its mortgage underwriting guidelines. The changes include newer, harsher ARM qualification standards, the elimination of a once-popular loan product, and tighter rules for interest only mortgages.
Continue Reading →Mortgage markets improved last week on tame inflation data, a benign statement from the Federal Reserve, and ongoing credit problems in Greece. The factors combined to drop conforming mortgage rates to their lowest levels in 6 weeks.
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