Arizona Real Estate Notebook

Ah, May 10th, the good old days. The 30-year rate was 6.15. The 0.38-percentage point increase since May 10 represents a jump of $50 a month on a $200,000 loan.

30-year fixed-rate mortgage, average in Western U.S. for week ending June 7, 2007. Blue line is Freddie Mac forecast made 5/8/2007. “Mortgage rates climbed this week owing to market concerns of a tight labor force and wage growth. May’s unemployment rate remained at the second lowest level since May 2001 while average hourly earnings rose,” [...]

Lou Barnes is not a great writer and he is excitable. Nevertheless I like to check him out. About the flat housing prices, Lou wrote “‘flat’ is the statistically significant word for prices, but flat is enough to leave low-equity households — 15 percent of the mortgaged nation — badly exposed to economic shock and [...]

30-year fixed-rate mortgage, average in Western U.S. for week ending May 24, 2007. Blue line is Freddie Mac forecast made 5/8/2007. “Stronger than expected consumer confidence and recent comments from members of the Federal Reserve (Fed) raised some inflation concerns in the market, causing it to lower expectations of a Fed rate cut this year. [...]

30-year fixed-rate mortgage, average in Western U.S. for week ending May 10, 2007. Blue line is Freddie Mac forecast made 5/8/2007. “Mortgage rates inched up this week following the Federal Open Market Committee statement reiterating that the predominant concern remains the risk that inflation will fail to moderate as expected,” said Frank Nothaft, vice president [...]

30-year fixed-rate mortgage, average in Western U.S. for week ending May 10, 2007. Blue line is Freddie Mac forecast made 5/8/2007. “Low employment growth in April – the slowest pace since November 2004 – and downward revisions to both February and March job growth tempered market concerns of future increases in the rate of inflation,” [...]

Lou Barnes writes; First, of the awful subprime originations late 2005 through 2006, 50 percent of borrowers could have qualified for “A” paper. Contemptible behavior by desperate salesmen has concealed borrowers in better shape than feared, and withdrawal of trash credit is unlikely to collapse housing. Wow! If that’s true, or even partially true, it [...]

30-year fixed-rate mortgage, average in Western U.S. for week ending May 3, 2007. Blue line is Freddie Mac forecast made 3/8/2007. “The recently advanced report of first quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was weaker than expected, growing only 1.3 percent. The housing market alone shaved a full percentage point off real GDP growth,” said Frank [...]

30-year fixed-rate mortgage, average in Western U.S. for week ending April 5, 2007. Blue line is Freddie Mac forecast made 3/8/2007. “Mortgage rates have remained within a narrow band of 0.1 percentage points over every week in March,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist. “This relative stability is due to mixed [...]

30-year fixed-rate mortgage, average in Western U.S. for week ending March 29, 2007. Blue line is Freddie Mac forecast made 3/8/2007. “Recent data releases sent conflicting signals about the direction of the housing market,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist. “The rise in existing home sales in February to a 6.69 [...]

Should loan officers and mortgage brokers be responsible for letting a client choose a bad loan? The following letter is a composite of many I have received recently from borrowers who took out option ARMs (OAs) in 2005 and 2006: “I took this loan because the monthly payment was much lower than any of the [...]

Here’s a great little article on what determines your credit score. It’s strange that closing an department store credit card account can sometimes lower your credit score! Another confusing area involves “inquiries”: instances where you or other parties pull your credit report. “Hard” inquiries that indicate you are looking for a new loan, such as [...]

30-year fixed-rate mortgage, average in Western U.S. for week ending March 8, 2007. Blue line is Freddie Mac forecast made 3/8/2007. “Mortgage rates moved little in the past week, as the latest economic news gave no reason for change,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist. “The economy added 97,000 jobs in [...]

30-year fixed-rate mortgage, average in Western U.S. for week ending March 8, 2007. Blue line is Freddie Mac forecast made 3/8/2007. “Looking ahead, as excess business inventories are worked off and the drag from residential investment diminishes, we expect real GDP growth to accelerate in the first half of 2007 to 2.6 percent and average [...]

More details on the bad news for subprime mortage lenders.

30-year fixed-rate mortgage, average in Western U.S. for week ending March 1, 2007. Blue line is Freddie Mac forecast made 2/8/2007. “Mortgage rates drifted lower this week largely on the basis of new economic information suggesting a slower economy and lower inflation,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist. “Real GDP growth [...]

Another nail in the coffin for subprime loans. This possible change follows the Freddie Mac refusal to buy many subprime loans, effectively killing that market. Banking regulators, concerned that slack underwriting standards left many homeowners with mortgages they cannot pay off last year, might release new subprime mortgage guidelines Of course, these changes will prevent [...]

3 years too late. The company also will limit the use of low-documentation products in combination with these loans. For example, the company will no longer purchase “No Income, No Asset” documentation loans and will limit “Stated Income, Stated Assets” products to borrowers whose incomes derive from hard-to-verify sources, such as the self-employed and those [...]

30-year fixed-rate mortgage, average in Western U.S. for week ending February 22, 2007. Blue line is Freddie Mac forecast made 2/8/2007. “Mortgage rates eased a little more this week, as market participants were concerned over how much drag the slowing housing market may have on economic growth,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and [...]

30-year fixed-rate mortgage, average in Western U.S. for week ending February 8, 2007. Blue line is Freddie Mac forecast made 2/8/2007. “News of moderate employment gains in January led to a halt in the recent upward trend of interest rate movements,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist. “The 111,000 jobs added [...]