US banks are getting a surge of mortgage applicationsbecause of dramatically lower interest rates, after record loan defaults and thousands of job cuts have stretched mortgage industry resources to the limit.
Applications for home loans more than doubled in the two weeks after the Federal Reserve said it would buy mortgage bonds to help stabilise the market, prompting mortgage rates to fall by more than three-quarters of a percentage point.
Freddie Mac says mortgage rates at 37-year low, spurring historic refinancing opportunity
Rates on 30-year-fixed mortgages dropped this week to their lowest levels in at least 37 years, as the Federal Reserve pledged to pour money into the mortgage market in an effort to spur the moribund U.S. housing market. Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, reported Thursday that average rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages dropped to 5.19 percent, down from the year's previous low of 5.47 percent, set last week. The rate is the lowest since Freddie Mac's weekly mortgage rate survey began in April 1971.
In one of the biggest heists in American history, the Daily News "stole" the $2 billion Empire State Building. And it wasn't that hard. The News swiped the 102-story Art Deco skyscraper by drawing up a batch of bogus documents, making a fake notary stamp and filing paperwork with the city to transfer the deed to the property. more
Farmland is hot hot hot up 9 percent year over year. Iowa has seen 18% and South Dakota is up 21%. All because of rising protits form the Ag insustry and a demand for corn fuel (ethanol).
The Christian Science Monitor, Richard Mertens
Belfair is a private golf course community located near Hilton Head, SC offering two Fazio golf courses, real estate homes for sale. This gated community is doing well despite negative housing stories across the country. "People with money are buying second homes" in this quaint community.
Let's see Google wants to move their data offshore. The idea is to save energy as datacenters consume over 1% of the Worlds energy. Not a very green thing this internet. Anyway, the idea is to get the energy from alternative methods and the water will act as a nice cooling mechanism.
Question, what happens when the pirates (we call those guys terrorists these days) come a knocking on Google's unprotected waters?
More Google
According to Forbes, these are the 10 cities where home prices are most likely to rise in home values:
DO you think property will ever go up?
If you do then now is a great time to buy as bargains are everywhere:
Almost one-third of U.S. homeowners who bought in the last five years now owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth, according to Zillow.com, an Internet provider of home valuations.
Many believe that prices have gotten low enough that investors and bargain hunters are buying up post-foreclosure properties and other low-priced homes, thus causing a jump in pending home sales.
In fact, the Pending Home Sales index in June was at it's highest since last October.
Conventional wisdom says that the Subprime Mortgages is to blame for the housing crisis. However, a new study from UC Irvine found that it was Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac huge retreat from the credit market in 2003 caused the bubble and subsequent crash. This pulout was from accounting and political pressure. Melissa Lafsky the editor of the Freakonomics Blog gives her take onthe new housing study.
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