My Mind on Mortgages

Average 30-year fixed mortgage rates have remained below 4.00% (APR: 3.875%) for 6 weeks now according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey released today.  When you view the current level of mortgage rates from a historical perspective it becomes clear what an incredible opportunity this presents (see chart below which depicts average 30-year fixed [...]

As mortgage rates hover near all-time lows many folks are curious if it makes sense to wait and see if rates will go even lower.  If history is any indication it probably makes sense to lock in once we ring in the new year.  From 2006-2010 mortgage rates were higher in June than they were [...]

As I blogged about yesterday (HERE), the recent increase in mortgage rates has been prompted by an increase in inflation expectations.  If you’ve been reading the newspaper or listening to some of the financial commentators then you may be worried about the recent increase to commodity prices.  And if you monitor mortgage rates then you [...]

30 years ago when Egypt’s President Mubarak took power a mortgage applicant here in the US wouldn’t have paid any attention to geopolitical tension overseas for purposes of monitoring mortgage rates.  However, in today’s global economy disruptions anywhere on the globe can have a ripple effect to other places.  So how has political turmoil in [...]

This morning it was announced that China raised its reserve requirement for the third time in a month.  This monetary policy tool is designed to decrease the amount of money in circulation by restricting bank lending and ease inflationary pressure.  Despite this action many analysts are concerned that inflationary pressure in China is too great [...]

With much of the market’s attention being focused on the Fed’s QE2 announcement & last Friday’s monthly jobs report one storyline is flying under the radar.  It’s been a few weeks since I’ve used the term “sovereign debt crisis” on this blog but it looks like it might be making a triumphant return.  The WSJ [...]

The WSJ’s Real Time Economics page led me to THIS WEBSITE which is a pretty cool project.  According to the website… Inflation is a significant measurement for the economic health of countries around the world, but rates are often reported weeks after data is collected. To address this problem, Professors Roberto Rigobon and Alberto Cavallo [...]

Yesterday I blogged about TIP’s and how they can be a forecaster of inflation and thereby mortgage rates (you can view that post HERE).  By coincidence the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco also released a paper on the topic of TIP’s and inflation as well and the summary suggests the markets believe that deflation [...]

The WSJ ran THIS ARTICLE over the weekend which highlights the recent performance of TIPS versus standard US Treasury debt securities.  “TIPS” is an acronym which stands for Treasury Inflation Protected Security.  The difference between owning TIPS’s and a normal US Treasury note is that with the TIPS’s the US government will compensate the holder [...]

The WSJ blogged this post this morning on the heels of the release of the CPI report.  Given that inflation is the primary driver of mortgage rates I thought you might be interested in reading the different views from economists.  In reading these remember that greater-than-expected inflation would put upward pressure on mortgage rates and [...]