Category: Mortgage Industry News
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Mortgage Rates Spike
The bond market went a little crazy last week, and mortgage rates followed. By Monday of this week most lenders were quoting 4.0% for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM). The market calmed a bit midweek, and by Thursday Freddie Mac reported a slight easing to 3.94 %. The speed of the increase was close to…
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Rare and Endangered
We have talked a lot about the dismal post-housing crash stats on homeownership. They hit the lowest level in Census Bureau history in the second quarter of this year, 63.1%. Well, surprise. They didn’t get any better in the third quarter. While the overall rate did rise to 63.4% on a seasonally adjusted basis, the…
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Behind The Headlines
The headline was hopeful, “New home sales rise 3.1% in September,” but you know what they say about devils and details. New home sales were indeed up, but only because the August sales turned out to be even worse than first reported. Instead of the annual rate of 609,000 first announced, they were revised to…
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Positive Housing News
Commentary ~ February 5, 2016 Concern rose this past week about a slowing economy, both globally and here at home. The U.S. stock market continued its recent cycle of alternating triple-digit swings and the 4th quarter GDP came in at a measly 0.7%, lowering projections for the year to around 1.9%. The gloomy outlook however…
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Playing Catch-Up
Commentary ~ December 4, 2015 While most of us were more engaged by cooking, eating, visiting, and shopping than by what was happening on the housing front, the gears ground on without us. There is a lot to catch up on. Three major price indices–the Case-Shiller and the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s indices…