Mortgage rates set new record lows, might hold steady next week
Treasury bond yields, which influence the home-loan rates, have surged since Tuesday. Mortgage rates fell for the 10th time in 11 weeks, setting fresh record lows, Freddie Mac reported Thursday. But a rebound in Treasury yields in the…
The other night, I watched a couple episodes of the A&E documentary series Hoarders . For those of you who haven’t seen it, Hoarders is a documentary series that focuses on the struggles of people who suffer from compulsive hoarding. One thing that struck me over and over again…
From Paul Krugman in the NY Times: The Real Story … When Mr. Obama first proposed $800 billion in fiscal stimulus, there were two groups of critics. Both argued that unemployment would stay high — but for very different reasons. One group — the group that got almost all the…
A couple of quotes from Kathleen Pender at the San Francisco Chronicle: Little support for new home-buyer tax credit “We are not advocating another one. We think it’s important for the market to have time to recover on its own,” says Walter Molony, spokesman for the National Association of Realtors.…
Katie writes in: The article on budgets was *great.* I’ve long felt guilty for not doing the whole formal budget thing, especially since I always liked and did well at math. (Like you, however, spreadsheets cause my eyes to roll back in my head.) But here’s a question/comment on…
Hotel occupancy is one of several industry specific indicators I follow … From HotelNewsNow.com: STR: Chain scales report weekly increases Overall, the industry’s occupancy increased 10.6% to 60.1%, ADR rose 2.4% to US$96.50, and revenue per available room increased 13.2% to US$57.98. The following graph shows the four week moving…
What are we in business to do? Sure, make a living. But for me, that’s not nearly good enough. I need something more. And the thing that’s always kept me inspired are emails like the one I got this morning from a client named Jasmine Krnjetin with Silverton Mortgage…
Here is a graph from the Council of Foreign Relations blog: Greek Debt Crisis – Apocalypse Later Click on graph for larger image in new window. This graph from Paul Swartz at the CFR shows the default probabilities on three different dates: On April 30th, no European plan was yet…
The summertime swoon in U.S. mortgage rates continues this week, with averages for home loans falling to yet another record low. Click to enlarge Rates began to inch downwards in June, falling 0.37 of a percentage point in 11 weeks in which the 30-year average either set or met…
What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question. 1. 401(k) profit sharing 2. Online job application tips 3. Illness and challenges 4. College freshman advice 5. Mortgage decisions 6.…