Scott Fowler's (sfowler) Blog

Foreclosure is a hot topic among the press lately.  It's hard to turn on the television or open up a newspaper without seeing a story about it. But what's most interesting about foreclosures is that they appear to be concentrated in certain areas of the country.  According to the foreclosure-tra...

For the 4th consecutive year, the government has set the conforming mortgage loan size limit at $417,000. A conforming mortgage is one that, quite literally, conforms to the mortgage guidelines set forth by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The 2009 conforming loan limits, as released by the government...

Mortgage rates fell last week, marking just the second time since September that rates improved on a weekly basis. The biggest news of the week was the U.S. Presidential Election.  Markets appeared to cheer the Republican-to-Democrat transfer of power, posting large gains Tuesday, Wednesday and T...

On the first Friday of every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its Non-Farm Payrolls report.  More commonly, it's called the "jobs report" and the October's data is trending with the rest of 2008. After shedding another 240,000 jobs last month, the economy has now put 1.2 million Ame...

The interest rate against which adjustable-rate mortgages change is falling -- evidence that the global banking system is starting to stabilize. On any adjustable-rate mortgage, the initial "starter rate" remains fixed for some period of time, and then adjusts according to some pre-determined ru...

The Federal Reserve confirmed what most of us already knew -- getting qualified for a "prime mortgage" is increasingly more difficult. In a quarterly survey of 84 banks, 75 percent of respondent banks tightened mortgage guidelines over the last 3 months for the most qualified of home loan applica...

More than a handful would-be home buyers stayed on the sidelines this year, waiting for Election Day to pass.  The prevailing thought was that once the new President-Elect was identified, credit markets will systemically unfreeze and housing markets will return to normal. If history is a guide, t...

As global credit markets deteriorated in October, mortgage markets displayed an unnerving amount of volatility. Last week was no different.  But, unlike in previous weeks in which rates improved on some days and worsened on others, mortgage rates were mostly higher last week, finishing the month...

When the government nationalized mortgage lending in September, housing analysts predicted lower mortgage rates. For a brief two-week stint, they were right -- post-takeover, the 30-year, fixed rate mortgage fell below 6.000 percent nationally for the first time in 7 months. Since then, however, ...

The Federal Open Market Committee voted to cut the Fed Funds Rate by one-half percent today.  The benchmark rate now stands at 1.000 percent. In its press release, the Fed wasted no time addressing the key issue at-hand, stating that economic activity has "slowed markedly", pointing to three mai...