Mortgage News

From the CBS News Video Web site, an interesting story for anyone who’s recently applied for mortgage credit. The three major credit bureaus — Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion — sell the contact information of new mortgage loan applicants to other mortgage lenders that want to compete for the same business. It works like this: You call your loan officer for a rate quote Your loan officer submits a credit report to the credit bureaus The credit bureaus recognize that you…

Original post by Dan Green

From the CBS News Video Web site, an interesting story for anyone who’s recently applied for mortgage credit. The three major credit bureaus — Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion — sell the contact information of new mortgage loan applicants to other mortgage lenders that want to compete for the same business. It works like this: You call your loan officer for a rate quote Your loan officer submits a credit report to the credit bureaus The credit bureaus recognize that you…

Original post by Dan Green

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics’ press release today, the following is true (but subject to revision in August and September): 132,000 new jobs were created in June versus expectations of 120,000 33,000 more jobs were created in May than previously measured 42,000 more jobs were created in April than previously measured So, in total, today’s overall surprise was 87,000, measured against the total number of employed people (also in the BLS release) of 146,100,000. In percentage terms,…

Original post by Dan Green

Last week’s terrorist attacks in England barely moved markets in a surprising change from past attacks worldwide. Even as the country remains in Criticial Alert status, money is flowing to the U.K. on remarks from the Bank of England, and a foreshadowed interest rate increase. In the past, terrorism was considered a threat to financial markets and one that created Safe Haven Buying. Right now, not so much. So, one of two things is happening: Markets have already priced in…

Original post by Dan Green

In honor of Independence Day, here are 13 little-known bits of trivia about the United States constitution, courtesy of constitutionfacts.com: The first constitution was not known as the Declaration of Independence. It was called the Articles of Confederation. The U.S. Constitution has 4,400 words. It is the oldest and shortest written Constitution of any major government in the world. There are spelling errors throughout the Constitution, but the misspelling of the word Pensylvania above the signers’ names is a notable…

Original post by Dan Green

This Sunday, the Chicago Tribune ran a string of fantastic articles in the real estate and business sections. I probably won’t get to highlight them all this week, but one little tidbit from Mary Umberger made me chuckle. Author’s note: If you didn’t know, the Personal Finance articles in the Sunday Trib are worth the price of admission. All of the author paint fair and accurate pictures and avoid the scare tactics so prevalent in other papers. If you live…

Original post by Dan Green

Whenever financial markets unravel, everybody wants to ID the catalyst. This is what caused the market to crash, or that is the reason why the markets is stinky. Sorry to report — markets don’t crash on a single piece of news. Don’t believe for a second that New Zealand is the reason why the world is fleeing from U.S. mortgage-backed securities like cats from the Westminster Kennel Club. And yet, that’s what some pundits went on record with last Thursday…

Original post by Dan Green

This graphic comes from The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) and highlights how property taxes have increased across the nation since the turn of the century. The actual story focused on Florida and its intention to offer $6 billion in annual tax relief to its homeowners. And, as civic-minded people knows, the towns of Florida depend on those tax dollars for basic services like education, police and utilities. Debating the merits of tax relief, author Mark Whitehouse hypothesizes:Reducing property-tax revenues…

Original post by Dan Green