Posts about Mortgage Market Report as of September 10, 2009

The dollars role in international trade should be reduced by establishing a new currency to protect emerging markets from the confidence game of financial speculation, the United Nations said. UN countries should agree on the creation of a global reserve bank to issue the currency and to monitor the national exchange rates of its members, the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development said on Tuesday in a report.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Thursday that a program used to guarantee as much as $3 trillion in money market mutual fund assets will end on schedule next week. The program, which will be closed down on Sept. 18, had no direct cost to taxpayers and earned more than $1 billion in fees paid by the mutual fund industry, according to the Treasury Department . It was established at the height of the financial crisis last fall after a large money market fund “broke the buck” – meaning the value of its underlying assets fell below $1 for each investor dollar put in.

Here is some good insights from Chris O´brien at SiliconBeat . “This morning my inbox contained the latest report from Renaissance Capital . It has some hopeful news about IPOs, but not necessarily for Silicon Valley. First, the good news: ”After an uptick in filing activity, there are 67 companies in the active IPO pipeline, up from 29 in March 2009.” As far as Silicon Valley is concerned, that’s about as far as the good news goes. Now, here’s the bad news.

Bankrate: Mortgage Rates Show Modest Change NEW YORK, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate inched lower to 5.40 percent, according to Bankrate.com’s weekly national survey. The average 30-year fixed mortgage has an average of 0.34 discount and origination points. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040122/FLTHLOGO ) The average 15-year fixed mortgage and average jumbo 30-year fixed mortgage rates both increased slightly this week to 4.75 percent and 6.39 percent, respectively.

Mortgage-modification program shows improvement – Philadelphia Inquirer More than a half-million homeowners have been offered a chance to modify their mortgages to lower interest rates since February’s launch of Obama administration efforts to reduce foreclosures nationwide. Yet in testimony yesterday before a … Banks foreclose on more in county – Register-Guard The pace of foreclosures in Lane County showed little sign of relenting as 222 more homeowners received legal notices in August, RealtyTrac reported Wednesday.

As a Realtor, I’m supposed to be filled with nothing but happy talk (”Now is the time to buy!”  “No better time to sell!”) or a screaming advocate for the causes of the National Association of Realtors (NAR).  In this case, the big cause is the extension and expansion of the $8,000 tax credit for buying a home.  Currently, the $8,000 tax credit is available to people who are buying their first home or people who haven’t owned a home within the past three years.  The idea is to encourage enough people to go out there and buy a house so that the housing market will bounce back.  Good idea.

The dollar’s role in international trade should be reduced by establishing a new currency to protect emerging markets from the c o n f i d e n c e game of financial speculation, the United Nations has said. UN countries should agree on the creation of a global reserve bank to issue the currency and to monitor the national exchange rates of its members, the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development said on Tuesday in a report.

Home is where the heart is. Anyone’s home can be their most valuable asset. A house can be extremely valuable in an emergency, especially when having to meet financial obligations. But once a house is given as collateral and a mortgage is taken, times could become worse, making a person seek a refinance mortgage. Refinancing their mortgage would mean that they could turn their previous home loan into something more manageable, including helping that person own their home once again and also hopefully rebuild their financial position.

ECONOMIC 9-11: DID LEHMAN BROTHERS FALL OR WAS IT PUSHED? Ellen Brown, September 7th, 2009 http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/economic9-11.php A year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, questions still swirl around its collapse. Lawrence MacDonald, whose book A Colossal Failure of Common Sense came out in July 2009, maintains that the bank was not in substantially worse shape than other major Wall Street banks. He says Lehman was just “put to sleep.

According to the latest House Price Index from Halifax, house prices in the UK rose by 0.8% in August. August enjoyed the second consecutive monthly increase and is the fourth month this year to have reported a rise in house prices. House prices in August 2009 are still however 10.1% lower than the same month a year ago. The price of an average house in the UK has remained basically unchanged over the first eight months as a whole. An average house cost £160,861 in December 2008 and in August 2009 the average house was valued at £160,973.

Rob Roy – very eloquently put, I hear this argument from locals all the time ” you can work in the EU, we can’t” First of all I don’t know why you would want to, you live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. You were born with the privilege of being able to rent or buy anywhere from the off without the 20 year wait I endured. Quality of life, relative lack of crime, short commute to work and beautiful coastal scenery at every turn are all benefits that I fear some locals take for granted.

Just 12% of eligible mortgages have been modified under a $75 billion federal program to rework home loans into more affordable monthly payments, according to a Treasury Department report Wednesday. A total of 360,165 mortgage modifications are in a three-month trial period, and another 571,354 offers for modifications have been made to struggling homeowners, the report says. The goal of the program, announced in March, is to keep up to 4 million borrowers in their homes, an unprecedented federal effort aimed at stemming the foreclosures that are undermining the housing market.

Schwab PortfollioCenter, a leading portfolio accounting and reporting application used by about 3,500 independent advisory firms, has posted its specifications to the Advisor Software Database at advisors for advisors (A4A) . A4A is a new practice management portal for independent advisors. A4A features an Advisor Software Database that allows advisors to compare the most popular professional software applications side-by-side and feature-by-feature.

Foreclosure is a financial and legal issue. If you attack the issue from a financial standpoint, you must to have cash to pay your mortgage. If you attack it from a legal standpoint, you must be able to find a flaw in the foreclosure lawsuit to dismiss it. I don’t see any other way of stopping foreclosure.
If you are facing foreclosure at this moment, you are inundated by letters from foreclosure assistance companies that charge outrageous amounts of money to negotiate with your lender; the majority of these companies are a scam .

Timothy Birdnow And so history has been made, and the Great One, the Immaculate Deception has ridden into a session of joint Congress (they have to be high to listen to this guy babble) on his wide steed and delivered the greatest speech of his teleprompter’s life, even if it was to the sound of one hand clapping (which is all the actual applause that could be heard on PBS). Barack Hussein Obama, Comrad Barry and his Dancing Teeth, seems to have mixed up Cap’n Trade with Crunchberries and his leafy green agenda with his healthcare proposal; he recycled EVERYTHING in that insipid spectacle.

The Jenn Lawlor Scam Report – Don’t Join Jenn Until You See This Video! Who is Jenn Lawlor ? Jenn Lawlor is a Home Business Coach who is heavily involved in internet marketing and a company called Life Path Unlimited.  When doing random searches for online MLM programs, you’ll typically run into Jenn Lawlor’s videos and websites.  Jenn typically will have a brief introduction video on her websites and then invite you to subscribe to her newsletter for more in depth information.

Dustin Rohde Before you apply for the mortgage, before you even start looking at houses, you are going to want to pre-qualify. There is no point putting the cart before the horse and all that sort of folksy sounding advice. Pre-qualifying is a process where a lender examines the buyers credit profile (youll want a good one), and debt to income ratio (youll want a good one of those, too). This allows the lender to make an estimate on how much money they are willing to loan the buyer.

By Charles Hugh Smith, OFTWOMINDS Loose lending standards in government-backed mortgages is setting up the next wave of defaults and sharp declines in housing prices. Beneath the hype that housing has bottomed is an ugly little scenario: lending standards are still loose and the low-down payment, high-risk loans being guaranteed by government agencies are setting up the next giant wave of defaults and foreclosures.

Zero Hedge When one thinks of Dick Bove, one usually recalls this little note issued 3 weeks before Lehman’s bankruptcy: “If one assumes that the Neuberger Berman subsidiary is worth somewhere between $9 to $13 billion, the rest of the company is being valued at less than zero. A valuation of this nature would only make sense if the company were to go out of business and then still owe money to its creditors, which of course could not happen.

London’s Stock Exchange (above) leading market index closed above the 5,000 barrier for the first time in 11 months yesterday, apparently due to ”continuing hope” that an economic recovery was under way. The FInancial Times Share Index (FTSE) of Britain’s top 100 companies hit over 5000 points – the first time this has happened since October last year. Traders were reportedly talking about a ”feelgood factor” and the positive mood was being helped by brokers upgrading a range of stocks, allegedly “bullish UK consumer confidence” and a giant oil discovery off Brazil by BG Group.

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Amazon.de Widgets The low rates of interest in the mortgage, remortgage and loan market was expected to stop in the near future, and interest rate hikes were predicted.Now according to The Bank of England Inflation Report the great rates that can be granted at present are likely to remain in place for some time yet.The bank expects inflation to stay below 1%, and the Centre For Economics and Business Research predicts that inflation will stay at under 2% until the end of 2013.The prediction is that the 0.05% Bank of England base lending rate will remain until the end of 2011 which is much longer than earlier predictions showed.

Similarly to Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) has lowered its mortgage rates effectively September 9, 2009. Now the only difference with the two banks is the RBC made more changes. I could talk about it, but I think seeing a chart will help more.          Fixed Rates                                               To:                                Change:         6-month convertible                                4.60%                            N/C         1-year

By George Whitten, BosNewsLife Jerusalem Bureau Chief JERUSALEM, ISRAEL (BosNewsLife) -– The United Nations has called for the replacement of the U.S. Dollar and the creation of a global reserve bank and a new global currency to protect emerging markets from the “confidence game” of financial speculation according to a report obtained by BosNewsLife and its partner agency Worthy News.

Comment: The picks today are as follows: 1) I love this critique of wrong priorities of this administration, as expressed by Barry Ritholz of The Big Picture Blog. He concisely hits the targets that needed hit, and I always appreciate conciseness! Well done, Barry! 2) Kevin Hall, for McClatchy news, does a short interview of James K. Galbraith, of which I’ve excerpted brief highlights. 3) A new CBO report discusses the implications on asset prices by the baby boomer generation.

Refinance mortgage rates have been around 5% for the last two weeks and we are seeing very low interest rates in September.  We have seen mortgage interest rates go from 4.95% to 5.1% and every where in between since the beginning of September.  The Federal Reserve Bank has worked very hard to keep interest rates low and it looks to be working.  The Freddie Mac weekly mortgage survey has yet to report average mortgage rates under 5% but it is likely going to come sometime in the next few weeks.

Consumer Borrowing Collapses…What’s up with sterling? Option ARMs get ready to reset…Gold falls back to below $1,000…And Now… Today’s Pfennig! Good day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Well… The currencies, for the most part, kept the heat on the dollar throughout the day and in the overnight markets. The euro, did rise to 1.45 and change yesterday, while it is hovering right at that figure this morning, so it did give a little bit back.

The dollar’s role in international trade should be reduced by establishing a new currency to protect emerging markets from the “confidence game” of financial speculation, the United Nations said. UN countries should agree on the creation of a global reserve bank to issue the currency and to monitor the national exchange rates of its members, the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development said today in a report.

The Federal Reserve revealed survey results today showing the economy stabilizing throughout the country and the recession nearing an end. But without jobs, people won’t feel that recession’s end. As a result, even the Fed survey showed consumer spending “soft,” and employment “weak” in all 12 Fed regions. And that will impact the still-unresolved sector of the economy that could easily relapse us into a double-dip recession, the housing market.

Michael Barr, an assistant secretary with the U.S. Treasury, told Congress today that millions more foreclosures will hit the housing market, despite President Obama’s Home Affordable Modification Program, designed to encourage lenders and servicers to modify loans and help people keep their homes. “Even before the current crisis, when home prices were climbing, there were still many hundreds of thousands of foreclosures,” Barr said.

LAST LIGHT BOOK REVIEW First things first. Green shoots news today, courtesy of Ure over at www.urbansurvival.com . Total credit is down year to year. A decrease of 7% in June and a decrease of over 10% in July. You might not use credit cards or have a mortgage, but credit is the lifeblood of business. You expected to get rehired where? Also, a quick note on my bumbling kitchen chemistry. Not enough to stretch out into a full article, so I’ll use it here to stretch out today’s drivel.

For any home or investment property buyer, it’s great consumers have the resources and capabilities to do their own research, but consumers should consider the following before using stats off, or market reports off sites like RedFin or Zillow:   1. They do no compensate for foreclosures, short sales, bank owns. These have a significant impact on the pricing. Some of these units go for 30-60% under market value, which pulls the Price Per Square Foot (PSF) down.

Editor on September 9th, 2009 Apartment rents see annual price drop: Citi Habitats today released its rental market report for August, reveali.. http://bit.ly/2oFvws mortgage newsAdd to del.icio.usDigg ThisSubscribe to RSS feed

You finally want to own a place for yourself, something to call yours. You’ve worked hard to save up enough money to have a sufficient down payment, and you’ve kept your credit score at a reasonable number to look attractive to potential lenders. That’s usually the first step, and a great one! Now what do you do? When looking for a mortgage, your best solution is to seek the services of a mortgage professional.

It appears we are not out of the woods with the housing crisis just yet. The Treasury expects there to be millions more foreclosures coming in the coming months and years. Here is an excerpt from the recent Reuters story on the subject : Only 12 percent of U.S. homeowners eligible for loan modifications under the Obama administration’s housing rescue plan have had their mortgages reworked, and millions more foreclosures are coming, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday.

Mortgage applications surge as rates tumble – U.S. mortgage applications surged last week as demand rose to its highest level since late-May.  Applications to purchase a home hit its highest level since early January.  The Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index of mortgage applications, which includes both purchase and refinance loans, for the week ended Sept 4 increased 17.0% to 648.3, the highest level since the week ended May 29.  The MBA’s seasonally adjusted purchase index

Well… The currencies (for the most part) kept the heat on the dollar throughout the day and in the overnight markets. The euro ( EUR ) did rise to 1.45 and change yesterday, while it is hovering right at that figure this morning, so it did give a little bit back. There were no big announcements last night like we saw on Monday, so the currencies didn’t have anything to push them further. In fact, there may be a “letting the dust settle” period of time, with the Big Dog, euro, before we see any further advancement, given the euro’s huge gains yesterday.