Archive for the 'Market News' Category
Driving through Vegas yesterday left me with two conclusions. First, there are way too many new homes, and not nearly enough buyers, and Second, it is waaaay too hot to live there during August. Coincidence?
Trip to California was enjoyable. I have encouraged family members to keep their eyes open for real estate bargains so that I could perhaps get a home in California at some point. To my disappointment, they found the following two:
A 300 square foot cabin on a 3000 square foot lot for $216,000. Ventura County.
A beat-up trailer in a trailer park for $47,000. Los Angeles County.
The bubble may be bursting, but it definitely hasn’t been had any affect beyond slowing price increases. There appears to have been little drop in Los Angeles, though San Diego seems to be seeing small price drops as a result of a steady flow of foreclosures.
Home mortgage rates dropped across the board, with thirty year fixed rate mortgages going from an average 6.73 to 6.69%. When compared to a year ago, mortgage rates are still significantly higher, and given the current instability of the market, it seems unlikely that they will be falling much further.
With that in mind, and with an increasing number of mortgage companies leaving the business, now seems to be the best time to grab a mortgage before rates jump again.
Wells Fargo Mortgage, the nation’s second largest mortgage company, and one that encouraged me to lie in order to get a mortgage with them, has announced that they will no longer be permitting third-party brokers to issue subprime loans.
The company will continue to offer such loans directly to consumers (which is the method I had pursued when I ran into the loan officer’s ‘encouragement’ to fudge the truth. Hopefully they’ll proceed to further reform their in-house lending practices.
This move is seen as being indicative of widespread broker-abuse and predatory lending problems which have helped contribute to the increasing number of foreclosures across the nation.