April 2008 - MND NewsWire

Zillow has just inaugurated another aspect to its real estate services portfolio.

Now Zillow has turned the lead generation industry on its head.

Calling its service the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, Zillow offers borrowers the opportunity to receive multiple free quotes without submitting sensitive financial information on the site and for lenders to receive leads for free.

Here is how it works...

Fears of inflation pushed mortgage rates higher according to the results of Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey for the week ended April 24.

The Survey reported that the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 6.03 percent with 0.3 point compared to 5.88 percent with 0.4 point the week before.

Mortgage application volume was...

Housing price declines remain the greatest challenge to financial markets and could prompt a deep recession, according to Pimco's Bill Gross.

"Home prices which have fallen by 10% over the past 12 months and are set for a repeat by this time in 2009. Lower Fed Funds? They would, in Pimco's opinion, likely do more damage than...

Speaking in an interview with Fox Business news on Monday evening, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he did not believe that a second fiscal stimulus package was necessary and that the tax rebates mailed out yesterday would make a real difference to GDP.

Wachovia Corporation, the rising Charlotte North Carolina banking star is having a very bad April.

On April 14 the bank announced it had lost $350 million or $0.20 per share during the first quarter of 2008.

Then this past Friday Wachovia got hit with a double whammy.

In the morning it was announced that Wachovia Corp. had agreed to a settlement with The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) of as much a $144 million to end an 18 month investigation into its role in a telemarketing scheme that allegedly affected between 350,000 and 500,000 Wachovia customers, many of them elderly.

Then, according to a Wall St. Journal story, federal prosecutors are investigating the bank as part of "a broad probe of alleged laundering of drug proceeds by Mexican and Colombian money-transfer companies..."

National vacancy rates in the first quarter of 2008 were 10.1% for rental housing, up from 9.6% in the fourth quarter of 2007, and 2.9% for homeowner housing this quarter, compared to 2.8% in the previous quarter, according to a report from the Census Bureau on Monday.

Expectations for a pause in U.S. monetary policy were bolstered by an article in Thursday�s Wall Street Journal, where noted Fed watcher Greg Ip said, "The Federal Reserve is likely to cut its short-term interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point next week -- but then may be ready for a breather."

However, the Journal article also points out that...

As the overhang of new homes sits at a 27-year high of 9.8 months, new home sales are expected to fall for a fifth consecutive month in the March index from the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday.

In February's report, sales fell 1.8% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 590K, contributing to an almost 30% decline since February 2007, when the pace was...