October 20 2010 (Jeff Alan) Amidst a background of what seems like a continuous barrage of bad news, finally some good news! Housing starts rose to a 610,000 annual rate in September, the most since April, and a 0.3 percent increase from a revised 608,000 rate in August, according to figures released Tuesday by the [...]
October 19 2010 (Jeff Alan) Federal Housing Administration Commissioner David Stevens this week urged the Obama administration to pressure mortgage lenders to write down principal for underwater borrowers. “In my view we need to push hard on the industry. Servicers and investors have got to begin writing down principal," Stevens told a Women in Housing [...]
October 18 2010 (Chris Moore) Surely to be one of the most frequently asked questions for years to come. With foreclosures and bankruptcies at record highs, millions and millions of Americans face the long term prospect of dealing with the effects of the current economic crisis and the credit crisis that could slow the economic [...]
October 17 2010 (Chris Moore) Coldwell Banker released its survey of the 10 most affordable markets in America. The snapshot survey was from 18,000 listing that were in Coldwell Bankers system from February through August of 2010 from nearly 300 markets in which Coldwell Banker has a presence. The only criterion was that the homes [...]
October 15 2010 (Chris Moore) Freddie Mac today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), which found that the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate fell again to break the survey’s all-time low; the 30-year FRM has been under 5 percent for 23 weeks in a row. The last time 30-year FRM rates were [...]
October 14 2010 (Shirley Allen) As mortgage rates have dipped to modern record lows this fall, the inevitable question of how low can rates go seems to be one of the hot topics as we enter the last quarter of the year. Ironically, just this last spring economists had been warning that rates would probably [...]
October 13 2010 (Shirley Allen) Refinance demand surged higher this week as mortgage rates hit record lows according to the latest survey released by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). MBA’s refinance index had fallen for the last five straight weeks but home loan demand increased 14.6 percent for the week ending October 8th as mortgage [...]
October 12 2010 (Chris Moore) When the housing market finally quiets down and the dust has settled, probably one of the most asked questions is going to be, “How long do I have to wait to buy a home if I had a foreclosure?” With millions of homes in foreclosure and possibly a million or [...]
October 11 2010 (Jeff Alan) Since very few people pay cash for a home, one of the most important steps in your purchase is finding a lender for your mortgage loan. The question is, should you deal directly with a lender or should you use a mortgage broker? There’s actually a big difference between the [...]
