RECENT BLOG POSTS
Temporary Conforming Loan Limits Expire September 30, 2011 If you live in a high-cost area, keep an eye on your calendar. Effective October 1, 2011, temporary conforming loan limits will be lowered nationwide. Perhaps by as much as 14 percent. These limits range up to $729,750 currently. "Tempo...
06/10/2011
"Homes Under Contract" Plunge 12 Percent In April Hurt by foul weather and a soft market, the Pending Home Sales Index plunged 12 percent in April. The monthly index is published by the National Association of REALTORS® and measures the number of homes on which new contracts have been written. I...
06/10/2011
Case-Shiller Shows Home Values Rolling Back 9 Years The March Case-Shiller Index was released this week and it corroborates the findings of the government's most recent Home Price Index - home values are slipping nationwide. According to the Case-Shiller Index's publisher, Standard & Poors, home ...
06/03/2011
Making A Rate-Lock Plan Before Friday's Jobs Report Tomorrow morning, at 8:30 AM ET, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its Non-Farm Payrolls report for May. If you're floating a mortgage rate right now - or are in the process of shopping for a loan - consider locking your rate sooner rath...
06/03/2011
Mortgage Guidelines Start To Loosen At The Country's Biggest Banks Another quarter, another sign that mortgage lending may be easing nationwide. The Federal Reserve's quarterly survey of senior loan officers revealed that an overwhelmingly majority of U.S. banks have stopped tightening mortga...
06/02/2011
What's Ahead For Mortgage Rates This Week : May 31, 2011 Mortgage markets improved last week ahead of Memorial Day and a 3-day weekend. Bond pricing ending the week higher, pushing conforming mortgage rates in South Carolina down for the 5th week out of six. Most economic news reported worse-th...
05/31/2011
Home values dropped for the sixth straight month in March 2011, according to the Federal Home Finance Agency's Home Price Index. The Home Price Index is a government-sponsored home value tracker. The HPI report is the latest in a string of "falling home values" stories - a trend that's troublin...
05/26/2011
New Home Sales Increase For The Second Straight Month Sales of newly-built homes surprised Wall Street, jumping 7 percent to an seasonally-adjusted, annualized 323,000 units last month. In addition, the supply of new homes dropped to 6.5 months - a 2-month decrease from October 2010 and the best ...
05/26/2011
0
Comments
Memorial Day Messes With Mortgage Rates Mortgage rates across the state are near year-to-date lows, but locking them in this week may be difficult. As Memorial Day nears, and Wall Streeters get a head-start on the long weekends, trade volume in the mortgage bond markets will dip. When bond volu...
05/26/2011
What's Ahead For Mortgage Rates This Week : May 23, 2011 Mortgage markets were unchanged last week, despite improving on four of five days. Economic data was worse-than-expected almost across the board, but neither FHA nor conforming mortgage rates in South Carolina budged. Instead, markets gra...
05/23/2011