Bob's Coto Blog

As this week's signal that homebuyers are returning to the market, both Existing Home Sales and New Homes Sales posted improvement versus month-prior figures this April. According to the National Association of REALTORS, the number of Existing Home Sales rose by 130,000 units in April. New Home S...

Conforming mortgage rates rose by 0.625 percent Wednesday.  Yes, you read it right.  Zero-point-six-two-five percent. The surprise surge in pricing started shortly after 1:00 P.M. ET, then continued all the way until the market's closing.  It was the sharpest one-day surge in mortgage rates in re...

Each month, researchers measure home values in 20 large U.S. cities, then compile their findings in a report called the Case-Shiller Index.  It's a popular measurement of housing health across the country, but it's far from perfect.  As 3 examples: It gives more weight to expensive homes than in...

Rates go up, rates go down.  Catch them while you can. After Wednesday's mortgage market rally drove rates down by a bunch, Thursday's sell-off pushed them right back up. This has been a common pattern in the skittish world of mortgage rates this year. With the U.S. economy still teetering betwee...

Mortgage rates fell after the Federal Reserve released its April 28-29, 2009 meeting's internal notes Wednesday. Officially known as "Fed Minutes", the report is an in-depth account Federal Reserve's last get-together, detailing the discussions and decisions that create our country's monetary pol...

A "housing start" is a new home on which construction has started and, for the fourth straight month, single-family home construction remained flat in April. For the battered housing market, this is the latest in a series of signals that a long-awaited turnaround is coming. The number of homes un...

One third of the way into the year and we have an interesting real estate market that has developed in South Orange County - both for buyers, and sellers.  Of course you have heard about distressed houses being a good 50% of sales for the past 12 months or so.  So, has this market turned into a g...

Getting approved for a home loan isn't getting easier, but it doesn't appear to be getting much more difficult, either. In its quarterly survey to member banks, the Federal Reserve asked senior bank loan officers whether "prime" residential mortgage guidelines had tightened in the last 3 months. ...

Home affordability improved again Wednesday after the government reported worse-than-expected results for April's Retail Sales. Mortgage rates edged lower for the third consecutive day. The impetus for the rate rally this week may be a long-awaited stock market correction.  After touching multi-y...

For the second month in a row, the country's foreclosure activity was dominated by a small number of states. As shown by the latest stats from RealtyTrac.com, more than half of the country's foreclosure actions from April were concentrated in just 3 states: California Florida Nevada Those 3 state...