Monthly Archives: August 2008

As we get closer to Labor Day, volume on Wall Street is dwindling as market players get a head start on their long weekend. Today could be a difficult day to shop for mortgage rates. Expect volatility. This is because … Continue reading →

Three years to the week after Hurricane Katrina caused $81.2 million in damages, Tropical Storm Gustav is charting a similar Gulf of Mexico path. Memories of Katrina are making oil traders nervous. The 2005 storm shut down 30 platforms and … Continue reading →

According to the June 2008 Case-Shiller Home Price Index, home prices in 15 of the 20 largest U.S. real estate markets either improved, or showed growth from the month prior. This is the fourth straight month in which that happened … Continue reading →

When a homeowner buys a new home, he has 3 options of what to do with his current residence: Sell the home, paying off the mortgage in full Keep the home as a second/vacation home Convert the home to an … Continue reading →

Momentum carried mortgage markets through a week of low trading volume and few economic releases. Rates were volatile, but ended the week unchanged overall. Don’t let the word “unchanged” fool you, however. From day-to-day last week, mortgage rates covered a … Continue reading →

Stories on TV about the national real estate market are misleading to Americans. This is because there is no such thing as a “national real estate market”. Consider the latest American Housing Survey. It found that there are 124,377,000 homes … Continue reading →

Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) is an insurance policy paid to a lender in the event that a homeowner defaults on his home loan. With the growing number of mortgage defaults nationwide, mortgage insurers are finding their balance sheets under attack … Continue reading →

The Producer Price Index is a business inflation meter and it’s now up 9.8 percent annually. This is a huge number for PPI and represents the highest year-over-year rate of inflation since 1981. Normally, blowout inflation like this would be … Continue reading →

Housing Starts measure the number of new housing “units” on which construction has started and in July, Housing Starts fell to its lowest levels since March 1991. For homeowners, this is a welcome bit of good news because as fewer … Continue reading →

Mortgage rates overcame a terrible Monday last week, climbing back to unchanged by Friday. And like most weeks this year, rates were volatile. Most interesting about last week, though, was that there was a ton of news that should have … Continue reading →