Ilyce's Views You Can Use

The number of home valuation websites continues to grow.  A simple Google search for "How much is my home worth?" shows 118,000 results and seems to get larger month after month. For home sellers, these programs can give a false sense of security (or insecurity!) about at what price a home should...

As we talked about Monday, the stock market appears to be directing traffic for the bond market.  Monday was a flat day for stocks, and it was a flat day for bonds, too.  Mortgage rates idled. Tuesday, with no economic data hitting the wires, market participants looked for direction elsewhere.  ...

Rising oil prices, weak housing data, and ongoing credit concerns pushed mortgage rates lower last week as investors sought safety for their dollars.  Stock markets took losses and bond markets -- including mortgage bonds -- booked gains.  Remember, when mortgage bonds go up in price, mortgage ra...

According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of Americans taking loans against their 401(k) plans is increasing because most plans allow participants to borrow funds to purchase a home or to avoid foreclosure. But just because the avenue is there, though, doesn't mean that borrowing from a 4...

Once again, the headlines may be misleading you.  It's a good thing that Housing Starts dropped last month -- despite what the papers say. A "housing start" is a new residence on which construction has started.  Yesterday, the government released September 2007's Housing Starts data for the coun...

Mortgage rates are determined by the prices of mortgage bonds; this, we've covered before.  As bonds prices go up, bond rates come down. And the price of a mortgage bond is a matter of Supply and Demand.  The greater the demand for a bond, the higher its price.  High demand for bonds is one reas...

The economy appears to have shrugged off August's credit market turmoil and is continuing to expand.  This pushed mortgage rates higher last week as market players move money into stocks and hope to capitalize on the Dow Jones rally. After the Fed's last meeting, the central bank lowered the Fed...

Mortgage calculators are ubiquitous on real estate-related Web sites but that doesn't mean that they're helpful. See, Internet-based mortgage calculators take three figres into consideration when determining "how much home can you afford". Income Debt Downpayment/Equity Next, the calculator figu...

As a sign that some normalcy is returning to mortgage markets, the premium attached to jumbo mortgage rates is getting smaller.   A "jumbo"-sized loan is one that exceeds $417,000 on a single-family residence, among other criteria. Conforming 30-year fixed rate mortgages and jumbo 30-year fixed ...

As expected, the big news last week was the Non-Farms Payroll report.  What wasn't expected, though, was the strength of the report.  Mortgage rates ended the week on a large up-tick. 110,000 jobs were created in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  This exceeded Wall Street ...