Long Beach California Real Estate Loans

Long Beach, Ca.  Congratulations to both the Steelers and the Cards for a great Super Bowl, I feel that it could have gone anyway and the Cards can hold their heads up high because they proved that they are Champions, last night.

So far, the FED and Treasury and White House have implemented over 58 programs to get the economy moving again.  Unfortunately, it does not seem to be affecting our real estate business fast enough for us to really feel it on the Streets. 

Currently, the almost 900 billion dollar economic stimulus bill sitting in the Senate is the 59^th and counting.  We hope they eventually get it right.  A friend of mine just returned from Washington DC last week, he is a CEO for a local commercial bank and said that after several conversations with Mr. Cox, the chief regulator, that Cox had confided to him, "the majority of banks are currently insolvent."  Oops, that was inside information.  But just run down to the bank and withdraw all of your money, just yet.

What is in the current package that may help the residential lending industry is the following: 

1.  Lifting the agency jumbo limit from $625,500 to $729,750, passed in the House version.

2.  Senate version is asking for a rate of 4% for 30 year mortgages.  Proposal floated this week starting on Friday.

3.  Revised tax credit from $7,500 to $15,000 with no required payback.

If you like to see how your tax dollars will be spent, this link can give you a breakdown.
 http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/major-provisions-stimulus-package/story.aspx?guid=%7BCD0FF22B-F34A-4850-9265-1C07F5DC5A04%7D&dist=SecMostMailed

And now for the numbers: 

Friday we had both the Chicago Purchasers' January Index and the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index come in lower than expected. These came in after GDP was announced, and tended to help yields somewhat, at the continued expense of its cousin, the stock market. This morning we've already had Personal Income and Consumption, -0.2% and -1.0% respectively. Since spending is falling even faster than income, the saving rate rose to 3.6%. In fact, Personal Consumption is down for the sixth straight month. The last three months have all seen declines of around 1%. Later on we have the ISM Manufacturing Index, and Construction Spending, not exactly market-moving numbers. So far the 10-yr is at 2.79% and 30-yr mortgage prices are worse by about .250.

We mentioned a few days ago about the need to allow adequate times for your locks due to the added costs being imposed by investors for lock extensions and underwriting turn times.  We also mentioned the need to strive to place your refinances during the first two weeks of the month.  Capacity is the issue for every company and  how we manage it is key.  We will talk more about this but please respond quickly to the requests from Post Closing to clear purchases as fast as you can during the next two weeks.   We have taken as many steps as we can to staff and work with warehouse lines with the recent volume lift, but when you have nearly 45% of the loan production try to get boarded in the last five days of the month, well Kudos to the funding staff at Corporate to make this months production happen. 

Kirk Mulhearn,  a Long Beach Real Estate Broker and Professional Mortgage Planner,Can be reached at 562-989-4608 ext.110.  Subscribe to this blog at:

www.longbeachrealestateandloans.com