Mortgage rates jump again, sending homebuyers to the sidelines
The brisk jump in rates, along with a sharp increase in home prices, has been pushing potential homebuyers out of the market.
The brisk jump in rates, along with a sharp increase in home prices, has been pushing potential homebuyers out of the market.
ARMs made up 13% of all home loans by dollar volume in March, their highest share since January 2020, according to CoreLogic.
Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates are continuing to rise, with interest on the key 30-year loan at its highest level since 2009.
Economists and investors foresee the fastest pace of Federal Reserve rate increases since 1989. The result could be much higher borrowing costs for households well into the future.
Meanwhile, mortgage applications fell again last week. The market composite index, a measure of total loan application volume, decreased 1.3% from a week earlier, according to Mortgage Bankers Association data.
The plan contains 21 steps to improve oversight and accountability, including a legislative proposal to modernize the governance structure of the appraisal industry.
With inflation raging at four-decade highs, economists and investors expect the central bank to enact the fastest pace of rate hikes since 2005. That would mean higher borrowing rates well into the future.
Costs for 30-year loans hit a more than two-year high of 3.69% last week, rising about 20% just since Christmas. Further increases are expected as the Federal Reserve, trying to curb inflation, hikes its benchmark rate.
The bank was accused in a lawsuit earlier this year of providing disproportionately fewer mortgages to Black borrowers, closing branches in predominantly Black neighborhoods and giving Black people less information during the mortgage-application process.
The Justice Department announced Friday a cross-government effort to investigate and prosecute redlining, the practice of banks discriminating against racial minorities or certain neighborhoods.
Congress approved $10 billion in federal assistance to help homeowners pay off debt, but the program is moving so slowly that protections are expiring before states have figured out how to distribute the money.
The White House replaced the regulator who oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after the Supreme Court ruled that the leadership structure of the Federal Housing Finance Agency was unconstitutional.
The chief executives of the nation’s largest banks went in front of Congress for a second day Thursday, facing questions ranging from inflation to their efforts to keep Americans in their homes after pandemic aid expires this summer.
The moratorium on foreclosures of federally guaranteed mortgages had been set to expire on March 31. Census Bureau figures show that almost 12% of homeowners with mortgages were late on their payments.
Long-term bond yields, which can influence interest rates on mortgages and other consumer loans, are climbing this month amid expectations of higher U.S. government spending on pandemic relief and an economy recovery as more people get vaccinated for COVID-19.
The 30-year fixed-rate average, the most popular mortgage product, sank to 2.66% with an average 0.7 point, according to the latest data released Thursday by Freddie Mac.
The case could mean undoing an agreement between the mortgage giants and the government that has sent about $246 billion in their profits to the Treasury. That was compensation for the taxpayer bailout they received after the 2007 housing market crash.
Although redlining—discrimination in banking and lending based on someone’s race or where they live—has been illegal since the Fair Housing Act passed in 1968, analysts at Indiana University’s Public Policy Institute found that inequities in home-loan lending still exist.
The program, called the Hospitality Establishment Lifeline Program, will provide grants to Marion County bars, restaurants and live entertainment venues that pay food and beverage taxes.
Housing advocates are warning of a tidal wave of evictions in the state this summer unless an effort is coordinated to head it off.