FREE MORTGAGE NEWS 4U.COM by Brenda Jarvis

December 3, 2008

Treasury urged to cut mortgage rates: Financial industry lobbyists are urging the Treasury Department to take steps to lower mortgage rates in an effort to stabilize the housing market. Under the proposal, Treasury would seek to lower the rate on a 30-year mortgage to 4.5 percent, Scott Talbott, a vice president at the Financial Services Roundtable, said Wednesday. That’s about one percentage point below the current rate of 5.6 percent. Treasury would do so by purchasing Read Full Article

November 25, 2008

Paulson: Programs aimed at getting lending to more normal levels The government, still struggling to manage a severe financial crisis, unveiled two new programs Tuesday that will provide $800 billion to try to help unfreeze the market for consumer debt from home mortgages to credit cards. The announcements by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department represented the latest modifications to the largest government bailout in history, a program designed to keep the troubled Read Full Article

November 25, 2008

$200B Treasury ABS Effort Could Fund Subprime, Commercial A new effort by the Treasury Department to revive the market for asset-backed securities could include "non-agency" mortgages, the government said today. Initial MBS Euphoria Wears Off a Bit The Federal Reserve's plan to purchase up to $500 billion of housing-related government-sponsored enterprises' mortgage-backed securities as well as up to $100 billion of their debt could mean a refinancing boom if the initial positive Read Full Article

November 6, 2008

Three Republican hardliners on GSE reform will not be returning to the Senate Banking Committee in January, and the panel could have a new chairman in the wake of Democrats winning the White House and larger majorities in the House and Senate. During their terms Republican senators John Sununu (N.H.), Elizabeth Dole (N.C.), and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) co-sponsored several bills to tighten regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac but their efforts did not garner much Democratic support. Sens. Read Full Article

November 1, 2008

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sketched out a blueprint for handling the mortgage-securitization crisis -- an issue both presidential candidates have cited as a priority. Speaking to a mortgage-finance symposium in Berkeley, Calif., by videoconference Friday, Mr. Bernanke said policy makers may need to maintain a key role in mortgage securitization regardless of the fate determined for government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Among the options he outlined was Read Full Article

October 17, 2008

As people wait for the federal government's various bailouts and rescues to trickle down and stabilize the economy, they got more bad news: The cost of financing or refinancing a home purchase has gotten more expensive. The average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped to 6.74% (6.4% for a 15-year), the biggest weekly increase in 21 years, according to Bankrate.com's survey of lenders. Last week's Bankrate benchmark was 6.2%. According to Bankrate, the new rate means Read Full Article