Loan Officer Yael Ishakis’s take on mortgage and finance news.
Consumer Sentiment has been on the rise since last February and it’s something to which home buyers should pay attention. The affordability of your next home may hinge on consumer confidence.
For as much as the foreclosure filing statistics can be astounding — over 300,000 homes were served last month alone — the prevalence of foreclosures depends on where you live.
Because of how frequently bank rules are changing, it can be hard for laypersons to distinguish between mortgage fact and fiction of what’s coming next. Recently, we saw this with respect to FHA home loans.
The economy’s improving but lending standards are not. Nationally, banks are making mortgage approvals harder to come by. Underwriting guidelines are tightening.
Mortgage markets improved last week on domestic jobs data and international banking concerns. The news triggered buying in the bond market and, as a result, conventional, FHA and VA mortgage rates improved for the 4th consecutive week.
On the first Friday of every month, the U.S. government releases its Non-Farm Payrolls data from the month prior. The data is more commonly known as “the jobs report” and it swings a big stick on Wall Street. Especially now — many analysts believe job growth is tightly linked to the future of the U.S. economy.
A Pending Home Sale is a home that is under contract to sell, but not yet sold. It’s a figure compiled by an industry group using sales data from over 100 regional listing services and more than 60 large brokerages around the country.
A “Short Sale” is when a home seller sells his home for a lesser amount than what is owed on his mortgage, and the mortgage lender agrees to accept the lesser amount in lieu of a full payoff.
In a news-heavy week, mortgage markets improved last week, adding to a 3-week rally. But, given last week’s data and domestic story lines, it’s surprising that rates actually fell.
Reporting on a two-month lag, the government said home values rose 0.7 percent in November. National home prices are at their highest point since February 2009. But before we look too much into the FHFA’s Home Price Index, it’s important that we’re cognizant of its shortcomings; the most important of which is its lack of real-time reporting.