Free Republic

Mass illegal migration has been tough on the finances of small cities and towns throughout the U.S. So, many of these towns are raising property taxes -- through the roof. South Portland, Maine, which has seen a mass influx of illegals flown in by the Harris-Biden administration, has raised its property taxes for residents 25% in the last five years as a result. Some have seen hikes as high as 60%. Spending for illegals and their NGO "services" keeps piling up, always going higher than the previously promised budget for them.

In a city that has raised taxes by almost 25% over the past half-decade, the mayor has made the obvious suggestion: use your home's equity to hand over your wealth to keep the city's gravy train going. You will own nothing and be happy. ⚡South Portland Mayor Misha Pride tells seniors to take out a reverse mortgage to afford the city's sharp increase in property taxes. pic.twitter.com/auJK1pzAdt— The Maine Wire (@TheMaineWire) September 23, 2024It's a brilliant solution if you think about it. You worked all your life to buy your house outright, happy that you can pass along the value...

For a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, the average rate you’ll pay is 6.27% today, a decrease of -0.17% since one week ago. The average rate for a 15-year fixed mortgage is 5.53%, which is a decrease of -0.25% from the same time last week. For a closer look at mortgage predictions this week, see here. With inflation at its lowest level since spring 2021 and a weakening labor market, the Federal Reserve is set to make its first interest rate cut in September, which should help mortgage rates fall in the coming months. Generally speaking, bad news for the economy means...

Homebuyers stuck on the sidelines waiting for mortgage interest rates to fall (or home prices to level off) may not have to wait much longer. With a combined cooling inflation rate and concerning unemployment figures, the Federal Reserve is now poised to issue its first cut to the federal funds rate since 2020. And some economists think it could be a substantial reduction. While the Fed doesn't directly dictate what lenders offer borrowers, it goes a long way toward influencing their rates, as homebuyers contending with the highest mortgage interest rates in decades can attest. But a reduction in the...

If you own a home, you've probably heard the age-old advice to pay more on your mortgage so you can pay it off faster. But what happens when you don't have thousands extra to throw at your mortgage each month? There's a really simple way to pay a little extra -- by making mortgage payments every two weeks. Don't worry, you're not doubling your costs! Instead, you pay half your mortgage payment each time. It's a great strategy for sticking to a budget since many jobs pay every two weeks. And, because there are 52 weeks in a year, you'll...

Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff have refinanced their luxury properties on the east and west coast ten times with loans totaling $13M. The second couple, both 59, have borrowed way in excess of what they’re worth – their joint fortune estimated at $8 million by Forbes. And, surprisingly, their various home loans and lines of credit are all with Wells Fargo Bank, the lending giant Kamala battled when she was Attorney General of California. Harris was in litigation for years with Wells Fargo just as she and Emhoff were living in a luxury property in the...

Home prices reached a new record in May amid an ongoing housing shortage, even as high mortgage rates continued to push affordability out of reach for millions of Americans. Prices increased 5.9% nationally in May when compared with the previous year, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index showed on Tuesday, down from the 6.4% pace recorded the previous month. On a monthly basis, prices climbed 0.3%, according to the index. "Home prices hit a new high in May," said Lisa Sturtevant, Bright MLS chief economist. "But with affordability a growing challenge for homebuyers and more new listings coming onto the market,...

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...