Fannie Mae is trying to tighten up its initiative to facilitate the sale of REOs to owner-occupants with FIRST LOOK®. For the first 15 days the home is marketed, only offers from owner occupants are considerered or accepted. After those 15 days, if no offer has been accepted, the field is open to corporations and investor-owners as well (those that do not plan to live in the home).

To get the process started to purchase your Fannie Mae owned home is easy. Visit http://www.garrick.biz/forms/purchaseAssistant.html to get the process started!

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After ending last week on a three day losing streak, loan pricing made a total turnaround in the first three days of this week, mostly thanks to the outcome of the FOMC meeting on Tuesday. This led mortgage rates almost all the way back to record lows on Wednesday morning. However, soon after, MBS prices began to tick lower (from the top of the price range) which forced a few lenders to reprice for the worse. This put pressure on mortgage rates.

The data calendar picked up today with several economic releases, starting with weekly Jobless Claims. Released by the Department of Labor, this report provides three timely metrics on the health of the labor market:

Initial Jobless Claims: totals the number of Americans who filed for first time unemployment benefits in the previous week

Continued Claims: totals the number of Americans who continue to file for benefits due to an inability to find a new job

Extended and Emergency Benefits: totals the number of Americans who have exhausted their traditional benefits and are now receiving extended and emergency benefits.

Since our economy is driven by consumer spending, market participants track employment data to get a gauge on economic momentum. Higher jobless claims imply less consumers have jobs and therefore less money to spend. This is a negative for the overall economy but generally helpful in keeping consumer borrowing costs from rising. Since peaking in mid-August at 504,000 claims, initial claims for unemployment benefits have either held steady or improved in the past 5 weeks.

Here are the results:

Initial Jobless Claims: +12,000 to 465,000 vs. estimates for a read of 450,000. WORSE THAN EXPECTED. Prior week’s data was revised worse to show 3,000 more claims.

Continued Claims: -48,000 to 4.489 million vs. estimates of 4.460million.

Extended and Emergency Benefits: +208,000 to 5.17million.

This worse than forecast data was a positive for mortgage rates. Bonds rallied on the news and mortgage rates looked like they were set to correct.

Fannie Mae is trying to tighten up its initiative to facilitate the sale of REOs to owner-occupants with FIRST LOOK®. For the first 15 days the home is marketed, only offers from owner occupants are considerered or accepted. After those 15 days, if no offer has been accepted, the field is open to corporations and investor-owners as well (those that do not plan to live in the home).

Fannie Mae wants to encourage owner occupied purchases to stabilize hard hit neighborhoods. These properties can be found on www.HomePath.com. Fannie Mae says these buyers bring permanency and stability to tenuous markets where swollen inventories of foreclosures have taken their toll, and the GSE is making some changes to ensure owner-occupants and public entities have “first look” at its REO homes.

“While investors play an important role in the REO market, homebuyers who intend to occupy a home make an immediate and lasting commitment to the community and therefore merit priority consideration in the REO sales process,” said Jay Ryan, Vice President for Alternative REO Dispositions at Fannie Mae. “Public entities under the Neighborhood Stabilization Program also benefit from inspecting eligible properties and making offers to purchase without pressure from open market competition. These entities are making considerable investments in rehabilitation and stabilization.”

To get the process started to purchase your Fannie Mae owned home is easy. Visit http://www.garrick.biz/forms/purchaseAssistant.html to get the process started!

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A lot of people, be it real estate investors or real estate agents, don’t know where to go for help with multi family buildings. The good news is there is great rates and products for the right person and property. Here I use one of my all time favorite scene’s in movie history to demonstrate!

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Multi Family Lending – East Bay Alameda California and the United States

Mortgage rates didn’t have a chance today.

Borrowing costs started moving higher early in the session and never looked back.

As the day progressed, agency MBS prices fell further and lenders were forced to reprice for the worse.

Par 30-year fixed 4.25% quotes are still on the board, but closing costs are at least 15bps higher (+0.15% of loan amount).

That’s really a best case scenario though. If you’re a passenger on the float boat, your closing costs probably increased by about 0.25% today. 4.375% is almost the new par.

But 4.25% is definitely still do-able for very well-qualified borrowers (no loan level price adjustments). Now 4.125%, that might be tough. That quote is costing perfect borrowers about 2pts.

The culprit of this event? Well. We can’t factor out a religious holiday: Rosh Hashanah. Many decision makers were out of office today, if not to celebrate their faith, at least to look after their kids who were enjoying a day off (public schools).

Combine that with an already apathetic investing bias plus a poor turnout at a Treasury bond offering…and the market got a little sensitive. Yes MBS had a very bad day today. But we’ve had bad days before. Yes loan pricing got dinged today. But we’ve seen loan pricing get dinged before.

We expected rates to move higher this week. If you’re floating, that means you’ve been doing so under the assumption that loan pricing was going to worsen this week. You knew to expect a period of volatility as the market searched directional leadership in a quiet environment. Rates could very well trend higher in the month ahead.

It was a really boring summer for return hungry investors, there is potential in the marketplace for stocks to rally on, even if the rally is built from glass. View it as professional traders attempting to spark some excitement. Profit Churning. If that makes you feel queasy, it’s not too late to lock up at a really really aggressive rate, especially if you’re closing in September.

But we never thought 3.5 MBS coupons would trade with enough liquidity to allow lenders to offer rates below 4.25%, but they did, albeit briefly. The economic and political environments are still clouded with uncertainty and muddled with assumptions based on assumptions. It’s hard to believe stocks could run too high without being spooked by a weak read on the labor market or another leg lower in the housing market.

Does this mean the lowest mortgage rates are behind us?

We might have seen the lowest rates we’re ever gonna see, if that is the case, then those rates are already behind us so it doesn’t mattter. No need to panic already. I think rate watchers with waiting time should sit back for now and see how this latest shift in benchmark yields plays out. If push comes to shove and we need to pull the emergency chute, we will alert. In the meantime, let’s see how the market reacts to higher yields. Play the Range Until the Range Plays You.

Courtesy of:

http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/consumer_rates/171091.aspx