Posts from ‘July, 2007’

Last week we saw the Dow and S&P 500 have their worst week in 5 years. And the media declared the housing woe as the biggest threat to our collective economic security. I know I’m exaggerating the media’s exaggeration here because last week I also read that the economy was growing at the fastest pace [...]

It’s Saturday morning. I’m drinking coffee and surfing the net reading economic commentary, looking at some really cool economic data and charts. What does that make me? (Not a real question!)
I want to share some cool things I’ve uncovered:

Calculated Risk has a chart demonstrating the historical rise in mortgage debt. It goes back to 1992 and quite [...]

Yesterday I presented a chart demonstrating how the payment can change for each 0.125% difference in the mortgage interest rate. As rates change so does the loan amount a borrower can obtain. For example, if a borrower can handle a $1500/month mortgage payment (not including taxes and insurance) then at a 6.00% interest rate this [...]

There are a few misconceptions about the fluctuations in interest rates. First of all rates do not change in 1-2-3% increments on a daily basis. At least it’s very rare and I’ve never seen it happen. Rates do change on a 0.125% or 0.25% or even 0.375% basis from day to day. During the life of [...]

Are you one of those people who keep papers on your desktop because you’re scared you’ll forget about them if you file them away??
We typically think of filing as what goes into a filing cabinet, but there is a subset of these files that we don’t want to file away for fear of out of [...]

I’ve really enjoyed the stock market run the past few weeks. Reading about the Dow crossing 14K was fun. I can’t even run the 10K very well and here was the Dow crossing 14K (ha ha ha.. you’re supposed to laugh). Anyways, today’s news isn’t good. The market fell sharply today partly due to housing [...]

Jay Thompson recently wrote about a real estate agent doing double duty as a loan officer on the same transaction. It seems to have garnered quite some buzz. I know real estate agents should be very well educated when it comes to home financing, but it would be hard to wear both hats. It’s better to [...]

I want to welcome Jennifer Furrier as a regular contributor on this blog. In fact she’s already appeared on this space. I interviewed her a few months ago on a few topics relevant to the real estate industry. This is just my introduction post.
Jennifer is the owner of Essential Organizing; a local company that works [...]

Last week I met with some borrowers who are doing a 7/1 LIBOR ARM. They understood the 7 year ARM part, but they weren’t quite sure what the “one” and the LIBOR meant. As a refresher, the seven year ARM basically means the rate is fixed for the first seven years. It will then adjust [...]

Last week we heard from Chairman Bernanke as he testified before the US Senate. Rhonda Porter at Mortgage Porter posted a very good summary of the Chairman’s remarks. So, what is in store for this week? There aren’t a whole lot of market moving reports expected, nor are we looking at anything big from the [...]