Cost of Living Reaches An All-Time High, Pressures Mortgage Rates Higher - 02/23/11 09:18 AM
02/23/2011  
Mortgage rates are up 0.875% since mid-November, causing home buyer purchasing power to fall more than 10 percent since.
Persistent concerns over inflation are a major reason why and this week's Consumer Price Index did little to quell fears. CPI rose for the third straight month last month.
Wall Street was not surprised.
As the economy has picked up steam since late-2010, the Federal Reserve has held the Fed Funds Rate near zero percent, and kept its $600 billion bond plan moving forward. The Fed believes this is necessary to support the economy in the near-term. 
Over the long-term, however, Wall Street … (2 comments)

FED MINUTES POINT TO LOWER UNEMPLOYMENT AND MORE ENCOURAGING NEWS.. - 02/18/11 10:05 AM
Fed Minutes Show Lower Unemployment And Higher Growth For 2011 and 2012
02/18/2011 By admin Leave a Comment
 
The Federal Reserve released its January 25-26, 2011 meeting minutes Wednesday afternoon. mortgage rates have been in flux since.
Fed Minutes are comprehensive recaps of Federal Open Market Committee meetings; a detailed look at the debates and discussions that shape our nation's monetary policy. As such, they're released 8 times annually; 3 weeks after the most recent FOMC meeting.
Fed Minutes can be viewed as the unabridged version of the succinct, more well-known "Fed Statement" that's released to markets immediately post-adjournment.
Just how … (0 comments)

Mortgage Rates Rise for the 7th Straight Day.... - 02/09/11 10:28 AM
Mortgage markets worsened for the 7th straight day Tuesday, equaling the longest losing streak of the last 5 years.
Conventional, 30-year fixed mortgage rates are now scratching 5 percent, with FHA mortgage rates running roughly the same.
This is a huge increase from just 11 weeks ago when mortgage rates were riding an 8-month-long hot streak, and appeared headed into the 3s. Then the Federal Reserve intervened.
On November 3, as additional support for markets, the Fed announced its second round of bond buys, a $600 billion program dubbed QEII - short for Quantitative Easing, Round II. Wall Street got spooked on … (1 comments)

Lowest Unemployment Rate in 2 years... good news and confusing data.. - 02/04/11 10:51 AM
Americans are getting back to work. Sort of.
This morning, at 8:30 AM ET, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its Non-Farm Payrolls report for January 2011. More commonly called "the jobs report", the government's data showed a large decrease in the number of working Americans as compared to December, but a sizable drop in the Unemployment Rate.
The job growth figures were much lower than consensus estimates:
Expected job growth in January : +148,000 jobs Actual job growth in January : +36,000 jobs January's Unemployment Rate surprised analysts, too, but not in a bad way, falling from 9.4 percent in … (1 comments)

ARE MORTGAGE GUIDELINES STARTING TO LOOSEN? - 02/03/11 03:45 PM
 
Mortgage lending appears to be loosening. At least for now.
In its quarterly survey of member banks, the Federal Reserve asks senior loan officers around the country whether their "prime" residential mortgage guidelines had tightened within the last 3 months.
A prime borrower is one with a well-documented credit history, high credit scores, and a low debt-to-income ratio.
Of the 54 responding banks, just 2 said its guidelines had tightened during the period October-December 2010. That's less than 4 percent. And, by comparison, 95 percent of banks said guidelines remained "basically unchanged".
The remaining banks reported a loosening.
It's a … (0 comments)

 
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Lori Blank

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