A release from the Mortgage Bankers Association this week revealed that refinancing activity across the country was up 9.5 percent in the week ending Sept. 15 over the previous week. Click here for graphs and more data from the blogger over at Calculated Risk and here for the DowJones MarketWatch story, which reports the refinancing level at the highest level since February.
But mortgage rates, as reported today in mortgage mogul Freddie Mac’s weekly survey, were at a six-month low of 6.40 percent, down from 6.43 percent last week. Click here for the AP story or here for the MarketWatch account. The boost to the wilting market came after the Federal Open Market Committee decided yesterday not to raise interest rates for another month.
From the Senate Banking Committee hearing on exotic mortgages I posted about yesterday: In the hearing, the banking regulators promised the new guidance for lenders issuing these loans would be coming out in “weeks, not months,” according to a quote pulled by the Calculated Risk blogger from the hearing’s question-and-answer period.
That guidance would require lenders to disclose more details – to enlarge the fine print, essentially – to borrowers about what they’d be getting themselves into in a nontraditional mortgage. Under the new guidance, lenders may even be required to analyze a potential borrower’s potential ability to keep up with the higher loan payments when the loan reset.