You can't get your mortgage rates from the newspaper. Last week proved it.  Again. Friday morning, headlines and around the country read that mortgage rates were down 0.04 percent, on average, since the week prior. A sampling of said headlines includes: US Mortgage Rates Drop For 2nd Straight Week (Reuters) Mortgage Rates On 30-year US Loans Fall To 4.93% (Business Week) 30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rate Falls Farther Below 5% (Marketwatch) The story behind the headline was sourced from the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, am industry-wide mortgage rate poll of more ...

Sometimes, headlines for housing can be misleading and this week gave us a terrific example. On Wednesday, the Commerce Department released its Housing Starts data for January 2010. The data showed starts at a 6-month high. A “Housing Start” is a privately-owned home on which construction has started. Headlines on the Housing Starts story included: U.S. Housing Starts Hit 6-Month High (Reuters) U.S. Economy Receives Home Building Boost (Shepparton) Housing Starts Post Sharp Rebound (ABC) Based to the headlines, the housing market looks poised for rapid growth through ...

Mortgage markets reeled Wednesday after the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its January 26-27, 2010 meeting. Mortgage rates are now at their highest levels since the start of the year. The Fed Minutes is a follow-up document, delivered 3 weeks after an official FOMC meeting. It's a companion piece to the post-meeting press release, detailing the debates and discussions that shaped our central bankers' policy decisions. The Minutes is a terrific look into the Fed's collective mind and, yesterday, Wall Street didn't like what it saw.  Specifically, the report disclosed ...

According to the Census Bureau, 2.8 million people commute to work 90 minutes or more each day, in each direction. Now, your daily commute may not be as long, but time spent in cars, trains and buses is time away from work and from family. Drive-time can affect a person's Quality of Life and it's one reason why Forbes Magazine's Best and Worst Commutes is worth reviewing. Measuring travel time, road congestion and travel delays in the 60 largest metropolitan areas, Forbes ranks city commutes from best-to-worst with Salt Lake City topping the list and Tampa-St. Petersburg finishing ...

Mortgage markets worsened last week on general profit-taking in the U.S. bond market, combined with talk of a coordinated rescue effort for Greece and its debt burden. Mortgage-backed bonds sold off, causing conventional and FHA mortgage rates to rise. There wasn't much hard data on which to trade last week, either, so momentum took markets farther than they otherwise might have moved on their own.  It marked the first time in 5 weeks that rates rose for rate shoppers. This week, data returns. Expect mortgage market movement. Some of the week's more important releases ...

Foreclosures stories dominate the national housing news. It seems at least one foreclosure-related story makes its way to the front page or the nightly news every week. But for as much as the foreclosure filing statistics can be astounding -- over 300,000 homes were served last month alone -- the prevalence of foreclosures depends on where you live. As reported by RealtyTrac, just 4 states accounted for more than half of the country's foreclosure-related activity last month. California : 22.7 percent of all activity Florida : 14.9 percent of all activity Arizona : 6.7 percent of ...

The mortgage lending landscape changes a lot.  Rates and guidelines are in constant flux, and it creates preparedness challenges for buyers that aren't paying in cash. The loan you get today won't always be the loan you get tomorrow. Because of how frequently bank rules are changing, it can be hard for laypersons to distinguish between mortgage fact and fiction of "what's coming next". Recently, we saw this with respect to FHA home loans. January 20, 2010, the FHA issued a press release with new lending guidelines.  Specifically, it announced 3 changes that will be effective ...

The economy's improving but lending standards are not. Nationally, banks are making mortgage approvals harder to come by. Underwriting guidelines are tightening. The data comes from the Federal Reserve's quarterly survey to its member banks.  The Fed asks senior bank loan officers around the country to report on "prime" residential mortgage guidelines over the most recent 3 months and whether they've tightened. For the period October-December 2009: Roughly 1 in 4 banks said guidelines tightened Roughly 3 in 4 banks said guidelines were "basically unchanged" Just 2 of 53 ...