Shopping for low mortgage rates is a game of luck. Some days, mortgage rates are favorable. Other days, they're not. And while you can sometimes make an educated guess about where rates might be headed, you're not always going to guess right. Even the experts get it wrong more often than they'
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04/14/2009
For the second week in a row, mortgage markets started the week strong and then ended with a fizzle. In the holiday-shortened week, rates were exactly flat overall. There wasn't much economic data to move rates last week, incidentally. The market's up-and-down action was largely based on two eve
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04/13/2009
When conforming mortgages adjust, they're often tied to an interest rate index called LIBOR. LIBOR is an acronym for London Interbank Offered Rate. But what LIBOR stands for isn't as important as the role it plays. LIBOR is an interest rate at which banks borrow money from each other. Therefore
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04/09/2009
There are 138 million taxpayers in the United States and, according to the IRS, 20 percent of them file their taxes within 7 days of April 15. In a holiday-shortened week, that means that 27 million people had better get a move on. And while a portion of this year's last-minute filers will file
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04/08/2009
April 4, 2009, marked the official start of the Making Home Affordable refinance program. Expected to help 5 million homeowners, the Making Home Affordable program "looks the other way" with respect to falling home values, approving mortgage applications based on borrower payment history and bene
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04/07/2009
Mortgage delinquencies are on the rise nationwide, but the news may not be as bad as it appears at first glance. Using anonymous data from its national credit database, TransUnion reports that 4.58 percent of American homeowners were at least 60 days past due on mortgage payments last quarter. Co
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03/03/2009
Mortgage markets worsened last week, taking interest rates with them. A steady drip of sour economic news plus concerns about the banking system outmuscled Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's congressional testimony in which he said the recession would likely end later this year. Overall, mortgage rates
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03/02/2009
In reading the headlines this morning, you'd think that last month's Existing Home Sales figure signaled more trouble ahead for the housing market. Quite the contrary. Beyond the attention-grabbing headlines is the real story; the one that shows -- once again -- that housing market fundaments a
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02/26/2009
One popular housing theory is that -- before a bona fide housing recovery can begin -- the cost of owning a home versus renting one must return to historical levels. If that belief is a truth, a national return to rising home prices may be in store for 2009. Falling home prices coupled with fal
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02/25/2009
As part of the stimulus package passed last week, Congress authorized a temporary increase to conforming loan limits in certain high-cost parts of the country. "High cost" is defined by a regions' median sales price. With the temporary increase, a greater share of Americans can now qualify for Fa
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02/24/2009