April Diehl's Blog

Review of Last Week IT'S ALL GREEK TO WALL STREET... The stock market ended down after a volatile week whose off-putting news ranged from Greece to Washington to the Gulf of Mexico. Greek bonds were downgraded to junk, while Portugal and Spain got downgrades too. Goldman Sachs execs were grilled ...

USDA Extension Update   The House of Representatives passed a bill extending the USDA housing program.  The bill raises the guarantee fee to 3.5% (from 2%).  Last week, Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (and Chris Cordry's uncle) , mentioned that conversations were ...

A License Required for your HOUSE?  If you own your home you really need to check this out at the end of this email is the Google link to verify.  If the country thinks the housing market is depressed now, wait until everyone sees this no one will be buying homes in the future.  We encourage you ...

The big question for home buyers and sellers today is: "Where are home prices headed?" People want to know if now is a good time to buy or sell, or if they should wait. We all need to stay on top of trends in real estate values -- so what's a good way to analyze the situation? Yale economist Robe...

Social media for busy professionals Online social media networks are becoming very important to the people we want to reach. For the week ending March 13, Facebook was reported as the most visited Web site in the U.S. This was the first time it surpassed Google for an entire week!  No wonder more...

Economic Calendar for the Week of March 29 - April 2  Date Time (ET) Release For Consensus Prior Impact MMar 29 08:30 Personal Income Feb 0.1% 0.1% Moderate MMar 29 08:30 Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Feb 0.3% 0.5% HIGH MMar 29 08:30 Core PCE Feb 0.1% 0.0% HIGH TuMar 30 10:00 Consumer C...

This Week's Forecast INFLATION, MANUFACTURING, JOBS... Everyone will be waiting with bated breath for Friday's Employment Report, when even pessimistic observers are predicting the recovery's first serious increase in payrolls. Markets will be closed for Good Friday, although the Federal governme...

>> Market Update  INFO THAT HITS US WHERE WE LIVE  February existing home sales were down for the third month in a row, but the 0.6% drop was less than expected. We had severe winter weather putting a damper on things and we're still seeing the hangover from sales pushed into October and November...

Breaking News Increase in Upfront Premiums for FHA Mortgage Insurance FHA loans with a case number assigned on or after April 5, 2010, will have a 2.25% upfront mortgage insurance premium. This is a .5% increase. Case numbers are generally assigned when there is a contract with a property address...