Don Grimes's (grimesd) Blog

Last week’s news was relatively quiet with no data significant to the mortgage lending released until Wednesday, when the federal government announced a $138 billion budget deficit for May. According to the U.S. Treasury this figure is 11 percent higher than for May of 2012, but the federal budg...

Last week’s financial news was relatively limited due to the Memorial Day holiday and no economic reports being released on Wednesday. The biggest news in terms of housing and mortgages was the S&P/Case-Shiller Housing Market Indices (HMI) released on Tuesday. The March HMI data for national hou...

Last week was jam-packed with economic news; here are some highlights with emphasis on housing and mortgage related news: Monday: Retail sales for April increased to -0.1 percent from the March reading of -0.5 percent and also surpassed Wall Street’s downward forecast of -0.6 percent. Retail sal...

 Mortgage rates fell last week and approached or reached record low levels. According to Freddie Mac, the average rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage (FRM) fell from 3.40 percent to 3.35 percent. Average rates for a 15-year FRM moved from 2.61percent to 2.56 percent. Average rates for a 5/1 ad...

Mortgage rates fell again last week and are again near record lows. According to Freddie Mac, the average rate for a 15-year fixed rate mortgage did achieve a record low of 2.61 percent as compared to 3.1 percent one year ago. The average rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage fell to 3.40 perce...

Mortgage rates fell for the third consecutive week. According to Freddie Mac, the average rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage fell by two basis points to 3.41 percent as compared to last week’s 3.43 percent and 3.90 percent year-over-year. The average rate for a 15-year fixed rate mortgage wa...

Mortgage rates saw little change last week amidst mixed economic news. Treasury auctions held on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday saw weak demand; this could have been caused by the FOMC minutes that were released on Wednesday. The minutes indicated that some FOMC members supported ending the cur...

Last week’s economic news includes several factors that drove U.S. mortgage rates lower. The Bank of Japan announced that it would increase its purchase of bonds by $1.4 trillion over the next two years. This news caused yields on Japanese bonds to fall, which made U.S. bonds more appealing to i...

European Market Jitters Continue To Affect The US Economy Mortgage rates fell last week as investor concerns over the European economy grew. Fears of growing differences between wealthier European nations and European nations needing economic aid brought higher bond prices and lower mortgage rate...

Last week’s positive employment reports were good news for the economy, which typically causes mortgage rates to rise, but mortgage rates ended the week lower. As of Thursday, Freddie Mac reports that the average mortgage rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage was 3.63 percent with borrowers pay...