Expert Advice from Amy & Kyle Bergquist at Keller Williams Legacy Partners
One of the most rewarding aspects of being a Realtor is being able to call a client and say, “Congratulations, your offer has been accepted – you got the house!” Amy made one of those calls just last night and, even though I was sitting a good four feet away from the phone, I could practically feel the buyer’s excitement. I couldn’t make out the words, but their volume and pitch increased significantly as they
The financial markets are in a difficult place right now, and the Federal government is working on a plan to intervene and hopefully stop the bleeding. Rather than trying to figure out who’s to blame, or speculating on what might happen next, I’d like to try to illustrate the negative feedback loop currently in place. Some observations: 1. Mortgage-backed securities are valued using computer models with numerous assumptions. The historical data used to generate the
Time for an update on mortgage rates! As has been written in this space before (here and here), mortgage rates are currently being driven by inflation expectations. The Federal Reserve has been focused on supporting the economy by lowering short-term interest rates at the expense of the dollar, which is one cause of inflation (another major one being the huge demand for oil/energy in China). The graph on the left compares mortgage rates for 30 year fixed
Buyers often come to me and say that they want to keep their monthly mortgage payment below a certain amount. It’s typically some amount over what they are currently paying in rent. For every house they will ask me, “What’s my estimated monthly payment?” I like to teach people this simple trick so when looking online, they can determine if they should be considering a property. Here’s the trick… At an interest rate of 6%
The Federal Reserve Board announced a further 0.25% cut to the closely watched Federal Funds Rate yesterday, bringing the short-term interest rate down to 2.00%. More importantly, they also signaled that this would be the last rate cut for a while. As has been discussed in previous posts, mortgage rates have recently been moving in the opposite direction as the Federal Funds Rate. Mortgage rates are long-term and are very sensitive to inflation expectations. The