John Lake's (johnlake2) Blog

The election results are in, and we have a new President-elect. Many of you have reached out, wondering what this means for mortgage rates. I recognize that any time there is an administration change, it will naturally bring market anxiety due to uncertainty of the future. While campaigns on both...

What happened to the low rates we were supposed to get???FEDERAL RESERVE CUTS RATES BY A HALF POINT!September 18th 2024Mortgages continue to bleed red ink on this Halloween day What’s going on? The Fed cuts rates by a half a point, mortgage rates party for about 2 weeks then crash! We have seen r...

Yes! Mortgage Rates Really Did Move HIGHER After The Fed Rate Cut!What? Last Wednesday the Federal Reserve lowered the Prime Lending Rate by half a point. However, we saw mortgage rates move a little higher, WHY?Interestingly enough, mortgage rates were already slightly higher the day before the ...

What are the headlines saying and where is the opportunity. This is a challenging market without question. I always look for opportunity in any of the market signals. If we have opportunity, all the other head winds really are distractions. Here are headlines from today, September 27, 2023, news ...

In the Words of the Songstress Paula AbdulI take two steps forward, I take three steps backWe come together 'cause opposites attractAnd you know it ain't fiction, just a natural factWe come together 'cause opposites attract.Over the last two weeks, the mortgage rate market has taken two steps for...

A lot has happened since we spoke to the rate market. Here is a recap. The GoodFederal Reserve Meeting increase of a .25 What was good about it is we knew it was coming and it was priced in, however the Q&A after looks like the Fed is done for a while based on economic data.PCE was good but not g...

What does time cost, apparently a lot!We have all seen those social media posts about buying now at a higher rate and lower price, then refinancing down the road. Date the Rate, Marry the Home. or It’s Your Forever Home Not Your Forever Loan! It’s very true. I want to point this out with some dat...

LET’S GET BACK TO NORMAL.Good morning everyone, as we begin a new week, we find the markets returning to what we now consider normal. If you had shut down the Friday before the 4th of July and went on vacation until Friday July 14th you would have thought “Nothing much happened while I was away”....

WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED???After we enjoyed the fireworks from the 4th of July, the labor sector reports added some sparks to the markets. AND we had the Fed minutes from their last meeting about what might be in store for rate hikes.The major damage, which saw rates surge back into the 7% range wa...

We had a very busy week. I have a new word I have been using to describe the mortgage rate market WHIPLASH! The beginning of the week saw a nice rally in mortgage back securities. We actually saw rates come down. That movement was due to the war in Ukraine. Then Wednesday and Thursday happened, F...