RECENT BLOG POSTS
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For the third consecutive meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee left the Fed Funds Rate unchanged at 2.000 percent. Of interest to mortgage rate shoppers, the FOMC led its press release with comments about the health of the financial and labor markets, calling them "strained" and "weakened"...
09/16/2008
Get Ready For Another BIG Drop in Rates This Week! More help on the way! Bad economic news is good news for mortgage rates!!! The financial and credit crisis has lingered on for over a year now, and today some of the biggest casualties are being seen. After 158 years in existence, Lehman Brother...
09/15/2008
On all principal + interest home loans, the first few years of payments include a lot more money going to interest than to principal. This is because mortgage repayment schedules are front-loaded with interest, meaning large-volume principal reduction won't occur until late in the mortgage's lif...
09/12/2008
Conforming Loan Limits Set To Decrease In Certain High-Cost Areas Conforming mortgages are limited by loan size, based on "typical" housing costs around the country. Since 1980, as home prices have increased, so have conforming loan limits. The current conforming limit on a single-unit propert...
09/11/2008
In its last act as a semi-independent company, Fannie Mae altered mortgage guidelines for real estate investors last Friday. It was Fannie's 22nd update this year. The first part of the guideline change limits the number of properties owned by any one person. Fannie Mae will now decline any mort...
09/10/2008
When comparing two investments with equal risk, a rational person will choose the investment with a higher rate of return. This behavior is called Risk Aversion and is a basic tenet of personal investing. An off-shoot of Risk Aversion is that a rational person will only invest in an instrument o...
09/09/2008
Great News!!! Substantial drop in interest rates this morning!!! Biggest 1 day drop I can remember in the last 10 years!!!! Mortgage Bonds are soaring higher on this weekend's announcement that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will come under control of the government. The government's move to creat...
09/08/2008
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On the first Friday of every month, the government releases its Non-Farm Payrolls report. More commonly called the "jobs report", the two-page analysis examines the nooks and crannies of the U.S. economy to see which industries are hiring and which are firing. The August jobs report was release...
09/06/2008
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A home inspection is a complete, top-to-bottom, visual check-up of the structure and systems of a house. It is meant to be an objective determination of a home's condition. A home inspection usually takes 3-6 hours to complete, depending on the size of the home. During the inspection process, t...
09/04/2008
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Mortgage rates are hugely important to household budgets. Lower mortgage rates free up household cash for spending and long- and short-term saving. Higher mortgage rates, of course, do the opposite. Unfortunately, it's impossible to predict the future of mortgage rates with any bit of certainty....
09/03/2008