As we get closer to Labor Day, volume on Wall Street is dwindling as market players get a head start on their long weekend.Today could be a difficult day to shop for mortgage rates.  Expect volatility. This is because mortgage rates are based on the price of mortgage bonds and, on Wall Street, bonds trade a lot like stocks. There has to be a buyer and a seller at a specific price to make a deal. With so many traders on vacation today, though, there are fewer opportunities to match buyers and sellers.  This can cause mortgage prices rise or fall faster than on a "normal" day, ...

Three years to the week after Hurricane Katrina caused $81.2 million in damages, Tropical Storm Gustav is charting a similar Gulf of Mexico path.Memories of Katrina are making oil traders nervous.  The 2005 storm shut down 30 platforms and 9 refineries.  And, this week, oil prices are up nearly 4 percent on fears that the market, once again, may be disrupted by storm.  Mortgage rates are edging higher on the news. The link between oil prices and mortgage rates is not a direct one, but it's worth paying attention to.  Rising oil prices strain business and consumer budgets, ...

According to the June 2008 Case-Shiller Home Price Index, home prices in 15 of the 20 largest U.S. real estate markets either improved, or showed growth from the month prior.  This is the fourth straight month in which that happened which means that a national housing recovery may already be underway. Now, it's worth stating that all real estate is local and that there's no such thing as a "national real estate market", but for home buyers looking to to maximize their negotiation power to get the best possible "deal", spotting trends like this before the media does is a good ...

When a homeowner buys a new home, he has 3 options of what to do with his current residence: Sell the home, paying off the mortgage in full Keep the home as a second/vacation home Convert the home to an investment property The most common action plan is the first one -- sell the home and pay off the mortgage.  However, with home prices poised to rebound, some savvy homeowners are trying to avoid "selling low". Unfortunately -- as of August 1, 2008 -- waiting out the market won't be so easy.  Burned by foreclosures and wary of risk, Fannie Mae issued new conforming ...

Momentum carried mortgage markets through a week of low trading volume and few economic releases.  Rates were volatile, but ended the week unchanged overall. Don't let the word "unchanged" fool you, however. From day-to-day last week, mortgage rates covered a huge range and it was only coincidence that Friday ended where Monday began.  And it's the second week in a row that that happened. Lately, mortgage rates have been highly sensitive to both inflation data and to the U.S. dollar.  Lucky for rate shoppers, both were given a boost of support last week by high-profile ...

Stories on TV about the national real estate market are misleading to Americans. This is because there is no such thing as a "national real estate market". Consider the latest American Housing Survey.  It found that there are 124,377,000 homes in America spread across: 50 states, with More than 30,000 incorporated cities, and with An innumerable number of neighborhoods And yet, the media repeatedly groups all 124 million homes into one giant lump and then gives an analysis.  No matter how you slice and dice the data, a home in Oregon can't be compared to a home in ...

Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) is an insurance policy paid to a lender in the event that a homeowner defaults on his home loan. With the growing number of mortgage defaults nationwide, mortgage insurers are finding their balance sheets under attack and their revenues in the red. So far this year, mortgage insurers have paid out $6 billion in claims. In response to the losses, the mortgage insurance industry is using two tactics to return to profitability -- and both mean bad news for homeowners. Raise the minimum standards to get insurance Raise the annual mortgage insurance ...

The Producer Price Index is a business inflation meter and it's now up 9.8 percent annually. This is a huge number for PPI and represents the highest year-over-year rate of inflation since 1981. Normally, blowout inflation like this would be terrible for mortgage rates but mortgage markets are actually improved since Tuesday's data release. Usually, a rocketing PPI would create an inflation expectation on Wall Street which would, in turn, cause mortgage rates to rise. Yesterday, however, that's not what happened. Upon the PPI release, Wall Street looked at the 9.8 percent ...