Wow, how the words higher rates be associated with 4.37% interest rates. These are all time low rates. They have inched up over the past couple of weeks, but they are still very low. These are record lows tracking back to 1971. Wow.
Did you see the 15 year? 3.82%, that is like FREE money.
Foreclosures are rising. That is because it is time for them to. All these plans, HAMP, HAFA, HASP and the like were to draw things out. They did what they were suppose to, not what people in trouble wanted them to do. Now, the banks are moving forward with foreclosing. As one Wells Fargo executive put it to me earlier this week, “we have a clog and we are flushing it through the system.” The clog is all the people that think they are getting Mods, but don’t qualify; the short sales that just won’t close and it is the group of people working the system and living in their home for years without making payments.
Just my opinion…JeffRCameron
Sept. 16, 2010
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Rates on 30-year mortgages climbed for the second straight week, but remain near the lowest level in decades.
The average rate for 30-year fixed loans this week was 4.37 percent, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. That’s up from 4.35 percent a week earlier and 4.32 percent the previous week, which was the lowest level on records dating back to 1971.
The average rate on 15-year fixed loans dropped to 3.82 percent. That was the lowest on records dating back to 1991 and was down from 3.83 percent last week.
Rates have been at or near the lowest level in decades since spring as investors worried about the state of the economy and moved money into safe Treasury bonds. That lowered those yields, which mortgage rates tend to track.
But recent economic data have given investors less reason to worry. First-time claims for jobless benefits have fallen in three of the past four weeks. And in August retail sales rose modestly and factory output grew for the 12th time in 14 months.
The improving economic outlook may have prompted some investors to pull their money out of the bond market and put it back into stocks.
But it hasn’t helped the housing market, nor have low mortgage rates. Home sales plummeted this summer and economists don’t expect that to change until the unemployment rate falls significantly and credit becomes more accessible to potential buyers.
Applications for new home loans fell by nearly 9 percent last week from a week earlier, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, foreclosures are surging. Lenders took back more homes in August than in any month since the start of the U.S. mortgage crisis, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.
In all, banks repossessed 95,364 properties last month, up 3 percent from July and an increase of 25 percent from August 2009, RealtyTrac said.
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