Mortgage Industry Blog

Be prepared for Friday morning. Mortgage rates and home affordability could worsen quickly. At 8:30 AM ET, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its April Non-Farm Payrolls report and momentum has been strong. The monthly jobs report is a market-mover and analysts expect that 196,000 new jobs ...

Home remodeling projects are expected to top $130 blllion this quarter, their highest total since Q1 2008. A likely catalyst is that the average cost of a home improvement project is falling fast. With the economy loosening up and contractor costs on a downswing, some in Greenville homeowners are...

Geopolitics Have Mortgage Rates Poised To Change Among the most challenging aspects of shopping for a mortgage is how rates change constantly. It's hard to pin them down. For example, in 2011, mortgage rates have expired every 3-and-a-half hours, on average. That's fast. There's two main catalyst...

What's Ahead For Mortgage Rates This Week : May 2, 2011   Mortgage markets improved last week overall. Bigger concerns for Eurozone debt combined with lesser concerns for domestic inflation to push U.S. mortgage rates lower. Last week marked the 3rd consecutive week through which conforming mortg...

Pending Home Sales Point To Seller's Market This Summer The National Association of REALTORS® Pending Home Sales Index rose for the third straight month last month. A "pending home sale" is a home under contract to sell, but not yet closed. The Pending Home Sales Index rose 5 percent in March, po...

New Home Supply Falls To 16-Year Low Preferred Trust Mortgage Blog | April 27, 2011 at 12:47 pm | Tags: New Home Sales,New Home Supplies,Margin of Error | Categories: Housing Analysis | URL: http://wp.me/p1frJY-3w   After posting an all-time low in February, New Home Sales rebounded strongly las...

  Mortgage markets improved slightly through last week's holiday-shortened trading sessions. Better-than-expected housing data led mortgage rates higher Tuesday and Wednesday, but rates retreated Thursday morning in advance of Good Friday. Markets were closed Thursday afternoon and Friday. They r...

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Preferred Trust Mortgage Blog Reply   Mortgage markets improved last week in a week of few economic releases. The one major data point - Retail Sales - showed stronger-than-expected, but markets reacted mildly. The report's strength was whispered in advance of the actu...

  Beginning April 1, 2011, Fannie Mae is increasing its loan-level pricing adjustments. Conforming mortgage applicants in South Carolina should plan for higher loan costs in the months ahead. If you've never heard of loan-level pricing adjustments, you're not alone; they're an obscure mortgage pr...

  FHA Streamline Refinance guidelines are changing. For the better. In an effort to improve its loan portfolio, the FHA is loosening approval standards on its popular refinance program, rendering large groups of homeowners suddenly FHA Streamline-eligible. Now, that may seem counter-intuitive - l...