Want to refinance on the FHA Streamline Refi program? Better get a move on. Beginning in just 5 days — November 17, 2009 — the FHA changes over to new guidelines for its popular FHA-to-FHA refinance program. Getting approved for a Streamline Refi will be more difficult and more expensive.

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FHA mortgage rates are lower than conventional mortgage rates right now. It’s an interesting development, especially for homeowners and home buyers with low equity. Unless you’ve got 20 percent into a property, if you’re locking a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, there’s compelling reasons to go FHA.

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Congress voted to extend and expand the $8,000 First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit today. The bill is expected to be signed into law Friday.The “First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit” isn’t just for first-time home buyers anymore.
Under the new rules, homeowners with at least 5 years in their current residence qualify for the tax credit, [...]

Need a mortgage rate prediction? I am a regular participant in the Bankrate.com Mortgage Rate Trend survey and this week’s survey may point you in the right direction.

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A brief recap of the Federal Open Market Committee’s November 4, 2009 statement and what it means for mortgage rates, homeowners, and the economy.

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Just a quick heads-up to my blog-via-email subscribers. Effective Wednesday, I am switching email services from FeedBurner’s free service to MailChimp.
It’s a new look for the same great mortgage blog content.
I use MailChimp to send email newsletters to my mortgage clients and find the company’s RSS-to-email product interesting. Y’all are the guinea pigs here. [...]

The last two years have been rough on housing in a chain reaction-kind of way.
First, mortgage guidelines tightened, preventing some homeowners from ditching onerous ARM products. That sparked a foreclosure boom that led to large losses on Wall Street. In turn, it sank the U.S. economy.
Today, as compared to 3 years ago, foreclosures [...]

Mortgage rates aren’t changing as quickly as they did this summer, but they’re still changing pretty quickly. Over the last two month, on average, lenders have updated pricing every 4 hours, 11 minutes. Over the last week, it’s 3 hours, 20 minutes. It’s tough to shop for mortgage rates at a time like this.

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Need a mortgage rate prediction for the next month? I am a regular participant in the Bankrate.com Mortgage Rate Trend survey and this week’s survey may point you in the right direction.
The Bankrate.com survey is for conventional, conforming mortgages only. It does not apply to FHA mortgages, veterans mortgages, jumbo or super jumbo mortgages. Nor [...]

Here is a translation of the Federal Reserve’s surprise rate policy statement.

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