Seattle Mortgage Loan and Real Estate Blog

We just finished up a brutal week on the mortgage rate front, 4 bad days with a good day on Friday. Hopefully the Friday trend continues into next week. It was a week devoid of much mortgage specific news but inflation readings are starting to come in high and nothing, absolutely nothing will bring up rates faster than rising inflation numbers.

Loan programs continue to be eliminated, programs that still exist are having more and more restrictions placed on them but I still feel this is a great time to buy or refinance if you qualify. Another piece of great news is FHA stepping up with higher loan limits and no requirements for nearly perfect credit or large down payments. FHA is or will become the home for all "normal" people loans in the near future.

We will be seeing a huge volume of mortgage rate resets on ARM loans over the next 6 months. After that period of continued foreclosures and borrowers having tough times refinancing I think the market will finally start to settle down a bit and lenders might get back to common sense underwriting vs. the extremes of today on the "tight" side and the crazy, anything goes times of the past few years. Cheers!