New Appraisal Rules Could Help Free Up Lending

New Appraisal Rules Could Help Free Up Lending By Kirk Haverkamp, Published: October 29, 2010 Along with tight credit and unstable home values, a new set of rules governing home appraisals have been blamed for making it hard to buy a home or refinance a mortgage over the past year. Now those rules are being replaced, which hopefully will lead to more accurate valuations and make home loans a bit...

Getting Answers: Seven Questions for your Mortgage Lender

By Barbara Eisner Bayer, Published: August 19, 2010 Mortgage rates are low, and applications are up. If you’re shopping for a mortgage, you’re entering a world where there’s a lot of information you may know little about. Don’t feel embarrassed — information about mortgage rates and closing costs aren’t taught in school, so unless you’ve worked in the industry, it’s perfectly...

Mortgage Rate Analysis

Here is a quick update about the bond market. It’s now earning season. The earnings are not bad and the banking industry is getting a lift earlier today in the stock market. But the economy needs to create jobs. Bernanke testifies today and tomorrow at Capitol Hill. The stock market tanked after his statement that the economic outlook is “unusually uncertain”. As a result, the...

Does Home Value Affect Your Ability to Refinance?

By Kirk Haverkamp, Published: June 30, 2010 What are your chances of refinancing your mortgage? Is it going to be a struggle if you’ve got a starter home at the lower end of the market? Are banks more willing to work with someone who has a pricey, custom-built home? Not necessarily. On both counts. The price of your home or size of your mortgage really doesn’t have much effect on your ability...

Mortgage and Consumer Confidence

Home Loan Rates and Consumer Confidence February consumer confidence index was released this morning and it was not good for the economy but good for mortgage rates. The index dropped 11 points since last month. This comes at the heel of gains for three straight months. What made matters worse was that the expectation before the release was a drop of less than a point, so the outcome of this news...

Get a Mortgage Now – Part II (6%?)

Reasons why you should get a mortgage NOW – part II Mortgage interest rate of 6%? In this part of the series, I would like to simply quote from an article written by Kirk Haverkamp that was written on February 4, 2010. I mentioned this article in part I of this series. The title of this article is “Window of Opportunity Closing for Home Buyers?”. You can find this article here...

Get a Mortgage Now – Part I

Reasons Why You Should Get a Mortgage NOW First, Federal Reserve Chairperson Bernanke made a statement this morning that outlines the Fed’s exit strategy from the historic low interests that we’ve been seeing recently. Of course, no actual timing was given; the possibility of raising rates depends on “economic and financial developments”. Although an exit strategy is...

Mortgage Rate Analysis

Here is a brief analysis of the mortgage market. I will focus on both fundamental and technical analysis. There are many ways to analyze the fundamental aspects of the mortgage market and today I will look at one aspect: the ISM services index. This index gauges expansion/contraction of the non-manufacturing or the service sector. This is important because over 80% of the US non-farm employment...

Home Value and Mortgage

The Challenge of Home Value for Buyers and Mortgage One of the biggest challenges in shopping for homes is estimating home values. Needless to say, overpaying for homes can be very costly not only in terms of mortgage amount, but interests over the lifetime of the home loan. As internet technology continues to expand, there are many web tools that offer online home data and home value...

Rate Confusion

Sorry for not blogging since early December. As the holiday approaches, I have been trying to push through mortgage applications before people start taking days off from work. Meanwhile, many things have happened that will affect mortgage interest rates. I personally find everything to be quite confusing because we are getting different economic signals. On 12/4 the November unemployment data...