Home Loan Resources

The 30 year Fixed Rate Mortgage rate increased to 6.17 % from 5.96%, while the 15 year Fixed Rate Mortgage rate increased to 5.7 percent from 5.49 percent. One-year ARMs decreased to 6.8 percent from 6.92 percent. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, came in at 502.3, a decrease of 15.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 593.3 one week earlier. The adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) share of activity decreased to 8.7 from 9.3 percent of total applications from the previous week.

Consumers are battling recession and inflation at the same time. The national average price of gas crossed $4 on Sunday, which translates into higher commodity and energy prices. The unemployment rate rose to 5.5 %, adding to the argument that we are unofficially in a recession.

Although the U.S. Treasury has already issued 57.4 million payments totaling about $50 billion in tax economic stimulus payments, opinion is that most of the tax incentives will be used to pay down debt and to keep pace with rising food and energy bills. Coupled with this is the fact that the economy grew at a slow pace of 0.8 %.