Scott Fowler's (sfowler) Blog

Another day, another piece of inflationary data.  June's Consumer Price Index showed a 5 percent year-over-year increase in what is now the largest annual Cost of Living increase for Americans in 17 years. This is bad news for both home buyers and homeowners in want of a new mortgage because risi...

Last week, Forbes Magazine published a Top 10 list that should grab the attention of housing market bottom-feeders. The Top 10 list of Increasingly Affordable U.S. Housing Markets shows that falling home prices and steady mortgage rates are providing a support floor in some of the country's most ...

Mortgage markets have turned their attention back to the U.S. economy this morning, causing yesterday's rate improvements to unwind a bit. Rates had fallen Monday after the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury's joint announcement in support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Today, it's the data that ...

Mortgage rates fell slightly in a week that included a bank failure, more oil price spikes, and questions about the health of the nations' mortgage market.  Rates would have fallen more if not for a late-Friday sell-off that added 0.125 percent to most products. As financial markets fell under st...

According to RealtyTrac, the rate of foreclosures across the U.S. is slowing.  Versus May, June foreclosures fell at a 3 percent clip. 25 states showed improvement month-over-month, led by many of the same areas that had fueled foreclosure activity in 2007.  A sampling of RealtyTrac's data includ...

A noon-hour, mortgage-bond rally rendered homes more affordable for Americans Tuesday. It was the second straight day on which this happened.  On both days, the action was swift. The speed at which Monday's and Tuesday's respective rallies tore through mortgage markets illustrates how deep the un...

It's a terrific time to buy a home, but not because homes happen to be affordable.  It's a terrific time to buy because the variety of mortgage products available to home buyers looks poised to shrink. Monday, Alt-A mortgage lender IndyMac Bank stopped accepting mortgage applications and it's lik...

Last week was fairly uneventful in the mortgage markets, with rates slightly edging lower across the board and without much data to influence trading. Even Thursday morning's hotly-anticipated jobs report was met with lukewarm interest; many traders had already left for the weekend. Mortgage rate...

On the first Friday of each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its Non-Farm Payrolls report.  More commonly, it's called the "jobs report". The jobs report is a sector-by-sector look into the U.S. economy and whether businesses are hiring -- or firing -- workers.  This is one of the r...

In the summer of 2005, sub-prime mortgage lending was at its peak.  Rates were relatively low and lending guidelines were relatively loose. At the time, the "standard" sub-prime mortgage product was the 3/27 ARM. The 3/27 had a few basic traits: A fixed, 3-year "starter rate" Every six months th...