May 2006 - MND NewsWire

Fixed rate mortgages continued to creep up during the week ended May 25 while there was a slight easing of adjustable rate products according to the Weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey released by Freddie Mac.

The average rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages ticked upward to...

T'was the best of times, t'was the worst of times.

It all depends on who you ask and when you ask them.

Two more housing surveys were released this week with very contrary results and it seems ever more clear that the housing market is either going to take a long while to sort itself out and decide which way to head or it may just see-saw or drift without ever resolving the question of the housing bubble.

The Federal Reserve in the persons of both its recently retired long-time chairman Alan Greenspan and his newly minted replacement Ben Bernanke have assured America that the housing bubble would not burst "on a national basis." The two, in fact, spoke as one last week on the subject as part of a concentrated effort on the part of the Fed to assuage inflation fears as the stock market took a major tumble.

But their upbeat assessments are in sharp contrast to several books, some of which are starring on best seller lists, warning of a coming cataclysm in the housing industry.

Amazon.com is currently featuring 16 titles dealing with the "bubble," most predicting...

It does appear that the housing bubble is, if not bursting, at least no longer expanding. For the second month in a row data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development indicates that builders at least are pulling back from the enthusiastic pursuit of home building opportunities that had been their pattern for several years.

In figures released on May 16, the joint survey revealed that...

Last month we ended our report on Freddie Mac's April Economic Outlook with the statement that "Freddie Mac's April Economic Outlook deviates only slightly from predictions in earlier months; the housing market is slowing but certainly not screeching to a halt."

May's report which was issued this week paints a slightly less optimistic picture.

The term TOC has been around for 20 years and there may be excellent examples of these types of development within your own communities even if you have never heard the name or really thought about the relationship between a development and the nearby transit facility. However, if gas prices continue to be $3 per gallon or more it may be inevitable that...

Mortgage rates barely moved during the past week according to Freddie Mac reporting for the period ending May 4 and the Mortgage Bankers Association for the week ending May 5. While the trend continued, as it has for some time, to be up for most products the one-year adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) actually declined according to both organizations.

Applications to refinance as a percent of overall mortgage activity decreased to ...

Vertical search is the new cyberspace wrinkle and a lot of people who spend their lives dreaming of the future of the Internet are predicting that it is going to change the way we look for jobs, love, hotel reservations, and real estate on-line.

Vertical search engines are a response to the tremendous success of Google and Yahoo and a reaction to some of the problems using the technologies they employ.

To give you an example here and now let's use - gosh, this is tough - real estate as a test. ...