What’s Ahead For Mortgage Rates This Week: April 20, 2009

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Posted on in Mortgage Rates

What’s Ahead For Mortgage Rates This Week: April 20, 2009

For the third week in a row, mortgage markets improved early in the week, only to give back the gains before Friday’s close. Mortgage rates ended last week exactly where they started.  However, if you locked your mortgage rate Tuesday, you got a rate decidedly lower than someone who waited until Friday. Last week, one of the biggest mortgage rate drivers was a series of surprisingly strong corporate earning reports, including those from financial firms Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. The positive reports pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its 6th consecutive weekly gain.  This is the market’s longest winning streak in two years and its best 6-week rally since 1938, in percentage terms. In part, the rally is boosting Consumer Sentiment, too.  According to a survey, Americans are feeling better about the economy than at any time since last September’s meltdown. But while stock market rallies and rising consumer sentiment can be good for our investment portfolios, they’re not always welcome when […]

by jberman
Posted on in Housing Market

Why Home Buyers Should Worry About Falling Housing Starts And Why Sellers Should Cheer Them

With respect to housing data, news is rarely positive or negative on a universal level. There’s always two perspectives to consider, after all. The home buyer’s perspective The home seller’s perspective Usually, when data is beneficial to one group, it’s less beneficial to the other.  This is true for rising home prices, average days on market and so forth. Today, the group that gets the most benefit from data is the home seller group. Published Thursday, a government report showed that Housing Starts fell 11 percent nationwide in March and also fell short of analyst expectations.  A “Housing Start” is a new housing unit on which construction has started. The press is calling this a stumbling block for the economy, but that’s not exactly true. Fewer Housing Starts last month means that fewer new homes will come on the market later this year.  This is not necessarily bad news.  Especially if you’re planning to sell your home in the latter half of the […]

by jberman
Posted on in Housing Market

The 3 States That Accounted For 50% Of The March 2009 Foreclosures

Since 2007, foreclosures have dominated real estate news.  You can’t turn on the news or open a paper without some foreclosure-related story.  But for all of the discussion, foreclosures continue to be geographically concentrated.  Adding up the latest stats from RealtyTrac.com, more than half of the country’s foreclosure actions from March occurred in just 3 states — California, Florida and Nevada. Those 3 states represent just 19 percent of the nation’s population. Despite the local concentration of foreclosures, however, they remain a national problem.  This is because mortgage lenders lend in all 50 states — not just 3 of them — so the impact of mortgage defaults in one region can quickly spread to others. In part because of foreclosures are higher, the following has happened: Mortgage guidelines have tightened Downpayment requirements have increased Private mortgage insurance has become more expensive That’s an important set of changes for a would-be borrower.  In some cases, it can keep a person from qualifying. Search the March […]

by jberman
Posted on in Consumer Education

10 Oddball Tax Deductions That The IRS Actually Allows

It’s Tax Day today and who among us doesn’t love a legitimate tax deduction? The IRS expects to process 138 million tax returns this year and accompanying those returns will be a melange of tax deduction requests.  Most will be run-of-the-mill including such staples as mortgage interest, vehicle mileage, and child care deductions. Others, however, will be less ordinary. On its website, TurboTax pays homage to some of the most off-the-wall, offbeat tax deductions through the years permitted by the IRS.  Among the “weirdest deductions allowed“: A bodybuilder’s body oil so his muscles would glisten in competition A private airplane for owners of investment properties Landscaping for a sole proprietor that meets clients at home A swimming pool for a man with emphysema Tax deductions are prized by U.S. taxpayers. Hopefully, your 2008 tax returns included some good ones, too.

by jberman
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