Archive for the ‘Moving to California’ Category
Good Time to Refinance? Not For Jumbo Loans!
The feds cutting interest rates can mean only one thing: mortgage lenders are jumping at the opportunity to persuade you to refinance your loan!
There’s just one catch: if you happen to be a responsible and conscientious borrower who locked in a jumbo loan at a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, your rates are probably better than what is being offered right now on the market.
At least, that’s what I’ve found: our jumbo loan 30 year fixed rate is 6.0% and as of today, most of the interest rates for jumbo loans hover in the low 6% but generally above 6.0%. I’ve seen some as high as over 7%! It is the non-jumbo 30 year fixed rate mortgages that have the attractive high 5% rates.
Unless you’ve lived in California for decades or traded “up” a house using the equity of your first house during the housing boom, you’re likely to be paying a jumbo mortgage, which is a loan exceeding $417,000.
SoCal Home Sales Continue to Plunge
From Reuters: “Sales of houses and condominiums in the most populous Southern California counties fell 29.9 percent from the previous month and 48.5 percent from a year earlier, DataQuick Information Systems said on Tuesday.
The report covers the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura and showed a total of 12,455 new and existing homes and condos sold in September, the lowest since the company began recording the data in 1988.”
Mortgage Defaults Rise in California
On the one hand, Countrywide Financial Corp. sees its second-quarter profit affected by mortgage delinquencies and defaults even among the borrowers with good credit, and the company prepares for even more people defaulting on their mortgage payments as time goes on. On the other hand, DataQuick Information Systems in La Jolla is reporting that lenders are filing over 50,000 notices of default during a 2 month period between April 2007 and June 2007 – staggering increase in 158% compared to the second quarter in 2006.
It looks like the current trend of increasing foreclosures and mortgage defaults is only going to continue – maybe even get worse.
