Dan Magstadt's Mortgage Blog

In all my years as a mortgage broker I've never done this. I just quoted 4.5% for a 30yr fixed loan. A month ago they were at 6.5% & two weeks before that they were 7.5%!! There has been a lot of speculation about the Fed lowering rates to 4.5%, but the market has done this on their own due to th...

In a move more aggressive than most analysts anticipated the Federal Reserve cut its target for the overnight federal funds rate to a range of 0 to 0.25 percent, a record low.  The rate had previously been 1 percent, and a cut of a half-point was widely expected. Obviously there isn't any more ro...

The Fed is expected to cut short term interest rates in half, to 0.5 percent, today. The danger is the Fed’s credibility could be hurt if they don’t clearly communicate a new strategy of manipulating the supply of money. At some point the strategy needs to change if the preventive measures & poli...

Right now any county in the US can go up to $271,050 & still qualify for an FHA loan….in some areas you can go up to $729,750 & still get an FHA loan. The Economic Stimulus Act implemented earlier this year allowed for a temporary increase in FHA loan limits for properties located in certain hig...

If you currently have an FHA mortgage with a rate higher than 6.5% now is a great time for a streamline refinance. A streamline refinance is much different than a typical refinance. If you already have an FHA loan with a good payment history the lender assumes that you'll make the new mortgage pa...

As I was working this weekend I thought about how things have changed from a year or two ago. At that time I (and many others in real estate) didn't work many weekends. That was then, this is now - Now it's open houses, prospecting, & meeting with sellers/buyers. Times have changed & you have to ...

If anyone looked at the moon tonight they probably noticed it was unusually large, especially just as it was rising. The orbit of the moon brings it closer than it's been in 15 years, almost 10% closer than normal. Coincidentally it was also a full moon, so the effect made it seem even larger. My...

Enjoy: A fleeing Taliban, desperate for water, was trudging through the Afghanistan desert when he saw something far off in the distance. Hoping to find water, he hurried towards it, only to find a little old Jewish man at a small stand selling ties. The Taliban asked, "Do you have water?" The Je...

The Fed meets next week and is expected to make another rate cut. The Fed’s job is to promote “maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates”....quite a task in these times. This will help lower interest rates on loans tied to prime like home equity lines of credit, man...

According to a study done by the Office of Thrift Supervision, more than half of all homeowners who had their loans modified to make the payments more affordable in the first half of the year are already in default again.  This opens an interesting discussion: Will a borrower that has already bee...