Posts Tagged ‘mortgage Utah’

Welcome to RateWatch for Thursday, August 05, 2010.  Here’s what’s happening:

Employment again is the news of the day, with new claims up another 20,000 or so to 479,000.  Continuing claims were down, though, to 453,700.  That was not as far down as the markets were expecting, however, and that’s meant that bonds have stayed strong.

Not too strong, though.  There really is no upside here.  Unless we get a truly shocking number tomorrow from the unemployment people, showing unemployment at, say 10.5%, there just isn’t any confidence in the bond market to cause a buying wave.

What that means for rates: nothing.  We’re down 6bps, which might just as well be flat.  There is no upside without huge news, and no downside because what news there is is bad.  So we’re hanging out with rates in the 4.5% range.

Anything else?: yep.  Sure is.  The big news today comes out of Washington, surprise surprise, with the Senate passing a bill that changes FHA fees.  Up-front MI will move from the current 2.25% down to 1%, a positive change, but more than made up for by the increase in monthly MI from an annual .55% to .9%, and the FHA gets authority to go all the way to 1.5%.

Bottom line: on a $200,000 loan, you are paying right now $4500 in UFMIP and $91.66/mo in monthly MI.  When these changes take effect, you’ll be paying $2000 UFMIP but $150/mo in MI.  For more commentary on that, see the blog at thechrisjonesgroup.com.

I’m Chris Jones, aka Agent Zero.  That’s RateWatch for today.  Until next time, we’ll be watching the rates.

Welcome to RateWatch for Thursday July 22, and here’s what’s happening:

Today’s market: The benchmark bond is down 15bps today.  We’re trading in a narrow channel.  It’s a huge day for economic news, with jobless claims coming out worse than expected – at least, worse than the experts expected – and existing home sales numbers showing the housing market still weak but not as weak as expected. All that bad economic news is bad for stocks and good for bonds.

What that means to you is worse mortgage rates, but not very much worse.  We’d need to be down 30-40 bps before banks would react with worse rates.  There’s a certain fatigue on the part of banks, who don’t really want to make loans in the low 4% range, so they’re not going lower on rates unless we have a huge move in the market.  That’s not happening.  Moves higher are very possible, however, so stay tuned.  To you all this means that rates are holding steady in the 4.5% range on most loans, down in the 4% range on 15-year terms.  Those rates are truly ridiculous, by the way.  At 4.5%, you can buy 20% more house than you can at 6% for the same payment.  An example:

6%, $200,000 loan, payment $1200/mo

4.5%, $240,000 loan, payment $1216/mo

So let’s all be grateful.

What’s in it for you? Money.  It’s going to take you 60-90 days to be able to complete a sale, so start the process right now.  For many of you it will take as much as six months.  Sound like a lot?  It isn’t.  And January is traditionally one of the cheapest times of the year to pull the trigger.  Do not wait to talk to a professional.  You can call us.  That’s what we’re here for.

That’s RateWatch for July 22, I’m your host, Chris Jones.  You can find us at thechrisjonesgroup.com or text us at 801-850-3781. ‘Til next time, we’ll be watching the rates.

So I made RateWatch a videocast.  Approximate text is below.  But I beg you – send me an email (chris@lehilender.com) or make a comment and let me know what you think.  Good idea?  Good idea but bad execution?  You don’t have to be gentle.

Let’s get to it.

MARKET: the market is down a bit today, off about 25 basis points.  For those just joining us – hey there, Tyler, Corrine, and Taylor – what that means is that the bond we track, the FNMA 4.5% 30-year bond – is being sold off and its price is declining.  It also means that the yield on that bond is rising.  Since lenders hedge their lending by buying those bonds, when the yields on them rise, mortgage rates rise with them.  So today mortgage rates are increasing.  Not very much, but a little.  More than we’ve seen in a month.

ANALYSIS: Markets rise and markets fall.  The big news over the past few weeks has been the increasing probability that we’ll see a market slump over the last half of the year and into next year.  There is also a real fear that next year could be truly ugly.  With the Bush tax cuts sunsetting on January 1, businesses will be moving their cashflow into the latter half of this year to avoid the explosive tax increase.  Dividend taxes nearly triple, which will be terrible for pension funds, and every single tax bracket will see tax increases.

Anyone that thinks that won’t have a huge negative impact on economic growth is not a serious person.  There is a chance – really, a pretty good one – that Congress will do something about an extension for part of the cuts, especially those that will have the smallest economic, but largest political, impact.  As of this moment, however, it doesn’t seem a good time to invest in stocks.  Bonds, as a result, have been flourishing, driving interest rates to 4.5% and even lower on some programs.

ACTION: We may have hit the bottom of this trench in mortgage rates.  Those of you that have been thinking now might be a good time to buy, now might be a good time to buy.  For refinances, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say it’s now or never.

Until next time, we’ll keep up the RateWatch.

Cj

Are birthdays magic?  Well, if you ask a four-year-old, they are.  My little son Nathaniel (“Thanner”) talks about his birthday pretty much all the time, despite the fact that it won’t come ’round until next May.  He tells you how old he is.  Tells you he’s almost five.  Tells you what he wants to do.  Tells you it’s next week.  Every day.

What is it about birthdays that we love?  Sunday is the birthday of the country I love best.  We celebrate this birthday with fireworks and barbecues and sixteen straight hours of World War II movies.  The biggest holiday of the year is the celebration of the birthday of Jesus Christ.  We have Washington’s birthday, and Martin Luther King’s birthday, and a dozen others.  We all remember the birthday of our marriages (we call them anniversaries, but they’re birthdays sure enough).  I remember every year the birthday of my career in lending in Utah (it’s the end of October).  We, as humans, love birthdays every bit as much as Thanner does.

Today is my forty-second birthday.  It certainly seems magical to me.  I have had already birthday greetings from a one-time prom date that I haven’t seen in many years (hi, Yvette!), from a kindred spirit that I met in Rome 25 years ago (Leslie, God bless you), and from an old girlfriend that now lives with her family in Australia (Jillyn, my dear friend).  And dozens of others.  I slept wonderfully last night for the first time in a good while.  I went to the gym this morning and I’ve lost weight again.  This morning my son Nicholas starts for the first time at point guard for his high school team.  The sun is shining, and the garden looks great.  My wife still loves me.

Many of those things were or have been true for a while, so perhaps it’s just that I’m noticing them more today.  But I am noticing them, and that’s part of the magic of the day for me.

For Thanner, I think part of the day’s magic – perhaps, in fairness, most of the magic – is the presents.  That faded for me a long time ago.  I can’t even tell my long-suffering wife what I’d like to eat for my birthday dinner.  It’s just not very important to me.  But there are birthday things that are important to me.  I like to know that I’m a better person than I was a year ago.  I like to rededicate myself to improving, to becoming better yet.  Birthdays are very good for that.  That’s a gift I give, not that I get, but I’ve noticed that I look forward far more to giving than to getting, anyway.

Every day I get the gift of a new life.  As a Christian, and a sinner (aren’t we all?), I make mistakes every day, and every day I need the grace of Jesus Christ to reach into the broken places in my soul and put things to rights.  I need Him to make things right for others when I hurt them.  He always does.  This is called, in Christian parlance, being “born again”.  So in that sense, every day is my birthday.  Every day is a new chance to be what I really want to be, what I am meant to be.

In the spirit of that, I am going to commit the gaucherie of asking for gifts today.  What I want is this: do something, no matter how small, to move forward one of those I-always-wanted-to’s that you have stored up.  You know the ones I mean.  “I’ve always wanted to write a novel” or “I’ve always wanted to go skydiving” or “I’ve always wanted to see a Broadway show.”  Whatever it is, do something to make it happen.  That’s what I want.  If you’d like to come back here and tell me what it was that you did, that would be great, but it isn’t critical.  Just do it.  Go the whole day without snapping at anyone.  Be cheerful in the face of certain disaster.  Become just a little bit more of the person you know you were meant to be.  Be born again yourself.

Let the magic begin!  Happy birthday to all of us!