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In LA in 2020, I was living with three other roommates — one was my sister, and the other two were friends. There were four of us in this five-bedroom townhome, and the rent was $3,800 a month — which was actually pretty good. My portion of that rent was $1,100 because I had the master bedroom. I bought the house in Tulsa in November 2020, and it just sat vacant until I moved there in December. It's a three-bedroom, two-bath house with a two-car garage, and my mortgage is $1,185.

Joe Biden and First Lady Jill have been using their homes as an ATM, taking out multiple mortgages and refinancing their Delaware properties an astonishing 35 times, a DailyMail.com investigation has revealed. The president has lived in two houses in his home state since 1975, when he bought his first property in Wilmington that he later sold in the late 1990s. But records obtained by DailyMail.com show the couple have had a habit of negotiating a new mortgage or credit deal on both homes every 17 months

Mortgage rates dipped just under 7% this week after crossing above that threshold in the prior reading as rates remain stubbornly high, stifling the housing market. Freddie Mac's latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey, released Thursday, showed that the average rate on the benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage ticked down to 6.99% this week from 7.03% last week. The average rate on a 30-year loan was 6.71% a year ago. The average rate on the 15-year fixed mortgage also decreased to 6.29% from 6.36% last week. One year ago, the rate on the 15-year fixed note averaged 6.07%.

With the terrible mortgage applications index from Wednedsay, we are seeing US pending home sales crashiing. As Joe Biden handles the economy his way. After an unexpected jump in March, pending home sales were expected to drop 1.0% MoM in April as mortgage rates pushed back above 7.00% and stayed there. Well, the analysts had the direction right but magnitude was way off as pending home sales plunged 7.7% MoM – the biggest drop since Feb 2021 (and below the lowest estimate), leaving sales down 0.7% YoY… Source: Bloomberg This is the 29th straight month of YoY declines for non-seasonally-adjusted...

From Mike Shedlock (Mish). It’s a perfect time to do something really stupid, like offering zero percent down payments on mortgages. Case-Shiller national and 10-city indexes via St. Louis Fed, OER, CPI, and Rent from the BLS Perfectly Stupid Timing Morningstar reports One of the Biggest U.S. Lenders is Offering 0%-Down-Payment Mortgages for First-Time Home Buyers. Home buyers will be able to buy a home without putting any money down under a new program launched by United Wholesale Mortgage, one of the largest U.S. mortgage lenders. The Pontiac, Mich.-based company’s new program will be available to first-time home buyers and...

I saw former President Obama criticizing former President Trump for not passing “transformative” changes. That is, Trump didn’t sign any Obama-like transformative changes (like Obamacare). Truimp did try to slow down the damage done by Obama and his transformative agenda (e.g., open borders, wealth redistritution, green energy) that Biden has attempted to continue. As we approach the party conventions and Presidential election of 2024, we saw the Economic Surprise Index (ESI) in May decline to -0.126. Coupled with Biden’s negative buying conditions for housing (higher mortgage rates and soaring house prices), Obama’s Jacobian transformative economic fantasty is on thin ice....

President Joe Biden’s policy of mass migration is forcing up housing inflation, so pushing up interest rates and mortgage rates, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Housing prices should have dropped amid the recent supply of new apartments and homes, but have “not behaved the way we thought it would,” said Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.. “I still think it will, but if it doesn’t, we’re going to have a hard time” bringing inflation back down to the target of 2 percent, Goolsbee told the Journal for a May 11 article.

Biden and Bidenomics is disastrous for the middle class and low wage workers. Food and housing prices through the roof, and now we have mortgage purchase demand declining -57% under Biden. Mortgage applications increased 2.6 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending May 3, 2024. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 2.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 3 percent compared with the previous week. The seasonally adjusted...

Lightning strikes TWICE! One year after regional banks crashed and burned due to the combination of tumbling debt/treasury prices coupled with cratering commercial real estate loans, fears about the current state of Commercial Real Estate – where most offices still see tenants at best 3 to 4 days a week and are literally burning through rents – appear long forgotten. Is that sensible? For one answer, we turned to the latest report from Goldman’s REIT/CRE expert Chandhi Luthra who has published a visual assessment of the state of CRE in 2024 in terms of loan maturities, 2023 extensions, and property...

Surprise! Just in time for the November election, this is a negative surprise that Biden doesn’t want to hear. The Citi Economic Surprise index crashed to -7.30, the lowest since January 2023. Under Biden’s leadership (hell, he and his family already own several mansions … on a Senator’s pay), home prices are up 32% under Biden and mortgage rates are up a staggering 160%. Getting young households who rent to buy a home in this environment will require magic.

Bidenomics is also a Highway To Hell for commercial real estate. Let’s say real estate is thunderstruck under Bidenomics. There are more dormant office towers in the United States than at any point since 1979, according to a new report from Moody’s Analytics, which began tracking office leasing vacancies that year. The rising supply of office space is due to a combination of surging remote and hybrid work that forces companies to reduce corporate footprints. Also, companies are exiting imploding progressive cities and high-taxed blue states for red ones while downsizing space. In the report, office tower vacancies rose to...

The staggering amount of Fed money printing combined with insane, reckless spending by The Federal government (hereafter called The Feral Government) has caused massive distortion in the US economy. The result of excessive money printing and excess spending (and Feral debt)? First, the Freddie Mac House Price Index increased in February, up 5.9% year-over-year. Second, the US Treasury 10-year yield is up tp 4.35%, the highest in 2024. Third, with the 10-year Treasury rising towards 5%, watch for the 30-year mortgage rate to rise AGAIN making housing even more unaffordable. Or as Robert Palmer almost sang, Simply Unaffordable. Today, the...

The cargo ship craashing into and collapsing the Key bridge in Baltimore is emblematic of Bidenomics: an ongoing wreck. And the mortgage market is the Key bridge collapse over a longer period. Specifically, from the start of Biden’s Regime in 2021. Mortgage applications decreased 0.7 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending March 22, 2024. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 0.7 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased...

The woes for the mortgage market continue under President Magoo. Mortgage applications decreased 1.6 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending March 15, 2024. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 1.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 1 percent compared with the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 1 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 1 percent compared with the previous week...

How bad is Bidenomics for the American middle class? We know that inflation is far higher under China/Ukraine Joe (even with those awful looking Hoka shoes), but the pain that is being felt is attrocious. Nike has made a pair of shoes fitting Biden’s international image.

The Biden administration unveiled a new program on Thursday aimed at alleviating the financial burden on homeowners by slashing closing costs on select mortgages, reviving a proposal that faced opposition from the industry in the past. The initiative targets a significant expense associated with closing on a mortgage: title insurance. In a pilot program, Fannie Mae will waive the title insurance requirement on mortgage refinancings it acquires from certain lenders, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. This move reignites a clash with the industry regarding the cost and necessity of title insurance and aligns with the White...

Radio personality Dave Ramsey has been called out online for delivering out-of-touch real estate advice to homebuyers. “Is it even possible to follow Dave Ramsey’s advice on a mortgage?” one person asked on Reddit — and their skepticism makes sense when you do the math. The ideal way to buy a home, according to Ramsey Solutions, the finance guru’s website, is to buy it outright in cash. But if you’re not sitting on a mountain of money, Ramsey Solutions says the only home loan you should consider is a conventional, fixed-rate mortgage with a 15-year (or less) term. Your monthly...

Dear Big Move, I’m struggling with the idea of selling a rental property that has both a high monthly maintenance fee and a high mortgage rate. The costs to keep this house are currently higher than the monthly income it generates. I recently refinanced in order to pull out $100,000, so now I owe $420,000 on the property, which is worth approximately $750,000. My recent refinancing increased my mortgage rate from 5.14% to 7.9%, essentially eating up all my cash flow. I’m on the fence. Should I sell, or should I refinance for a better rate to free up cash...

The mortgage market has reached stall speed thanks to Bidenomics (inflation begat Fed tightening that begat 7%+ mortgage rates). Mortgage applications decreased 5.6 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending February 23, 2024. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 5.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 3 percent compared with the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 5 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase...

Is it sundown for the US mortgage market? Mortgage applications decreased 10.6 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending February 16, 2024. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 10.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 8 percent compared with the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 10 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 6 percent compared with the previous week and was...