Mortgage applications rose last week driven by refinancing. The overall gain over the prior week was 4.9 percent with 1 percent gain from purchase applications and 5.7 percent gain in refinance.
Rates on adjustable rate mortgages remained flat this week while 15 year and 30 year fixed rate mortgages fell. 15 year fixed rate mortgages fell to 3.86 percent.
Resource: REALTOR®Mag & FreddieMac.com
Rates on adjustable rate mortgages remained flat this week while 15 year and 30 year fixed rate mortgages fell 0.02 points. Even with the low rates, mortgage applications fell 3.4 percent the prior week.
Resource: REALTOR®Mag & FreddieMac.com
Lenders are finding home-equity debt to be the hardest to collect. If a homeowner is out of work and the equity is gone due to falling home values, there is little incentive or desire for the borrower to repay.
In 2009, write-offs by lenders for home-equity debt exceeded losses on primary mortgages. Even if a lender takes their claim to court, they are lucky to get 10 cents on the dollar.
At the height of the lending frenzy in Arizona prior to the “crash,” there were 10,000 unlicensed loan officers handling borrower confidential financial information and arranging loans. Some of the loans were just risky while other were downright fraudulent.
In 2008 the Arizona legislature passed a law requiring all loan officers to be licensed along with fingerprinting and background checks. The law went into effect July 1 of this year.
So far over 4300 applications were submitted for licensing with a little over 2400 approved. Approximately 1000 applications are on hold pending more information or further checking.
Hopefully the licensing process will weed out unscrupulous loan officers and make those who commit fraud easier to identify and catch.
There is a lot more to the law than simply licensing. You can read the entire
Arizona Republic article by clicking
here.
Wednesday of last week the Senate approved
changes to the FHA fee structure. Today, HUD Deputy Assistant Secretary Vicki Bott issued a
statement outlining the fee structure change and timing.
Resource: REALTOR®Mag & HUD
Government backed loans, especially FHA, drove a 1.5 percent increase in loan applications last week.
Rates continue to be low contributing to the increase.
Rates fell slightly flat last week. For example, 30 year fixed fell 0.02 point to 4.54 percent while 15 year fixed fell 0.03 point to 4.00 percent.
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