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Market News
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Author: |
Allyson Chambers |
Created: |
6/9/2006 9:21 AM |
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MalibuFL.com's Market Blog |
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March 2008 Interest Rates on the Rise |
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By Allyson Chambers on
3/1/2008 9:09 AM
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Rates on 30-year mortgages rise
WASHINGTON – Feb. 29, 2008 – Rates on 30-year mortgages rose for a third straight week, hitting the highest level in more than three months.
Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, reported Thursday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6.24 percent this week, up from 6.04 percent last week.
That is the highest level since the week of Nov. 15 when 30-year rates also averaged 6.24 percent. It marked a significant reversal from the beginning of the year when 30-year rates dropped below 6 percent for six straight weeks reflecting a significant slowdown in the economy. That slowdown prompted the Federal Reserve to aggressively cut the short-term interest rate it controls by 1.25 percentage points in January, the biggest one-month cut in this rate by the Fed in more than a quarter-century.
While Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke again signaled during congre ...
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Forclosures up ........ |
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By Allyson Chambers on
2/8/2008 11:43 AM
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MIAMI – Feb. 7, 2008 – With more than a thousand foreclosed homes queued up for the auction block in February, the Miami-Dade County Clerk of Court’s office is expanding the number of days it auctions properties from two to three per week.
“We’ve been running into some serious problems,” said Michael Henderson, a spokesman for the clerk’s office. “We’ve needed [an extra day] now for a couple of months, because it is already unmanageable with two days and we expect the caseload to increase further.”
The extra auction day is expected to be added starting in March, most likely on Fridays. Henderson said the office was trying to find the resources to pay staff and make other arrangements for the change.
Huge numbers of foreclosures have made the extra day necessary. Nearly 320 homes are being auctioned weekly in Miami-Dade, as homeowners and investors go belly-up on spiking adjustable rate loan payments. Foreclosure filings in 2007 soared 168 percent over t ...
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Market News January 2008 |
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By Allyson Chambers on
1/8/2008 3:48 PM
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Florida real estate market reached bottom in 2007, report says
ORLANDO, Fla. – Jan. 8, 2008 – A new report from the Attorneys’ Title Insurance Fund Inc. (The Fund) finds that Florida’s housing market slowed in 2007 in nearly every county analyzed. The report also shows that real estate markets flattened out in spring 2007, before the subprime mortgage crisis in August knocked markets down another 10 percent across the state. Since then, the state’s housing market has flattened and is expected to begin to recover during the next several years.
The 2008 Fund Real Estate Forecast, commissioned by Florida-based Attorneys’ Title Insurance Fund's Consumer Education Campaign, was created by economist Dr. Hank Fishkind of Orlando-based Fishkind & Associates, Inc., using deed data for more than 30 Florida counties. The report provides a snapshot of the national economic outlook and 33 county-specific forecasts for 2008 through 201 ...
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November 2007 |
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By Allyson Chambers on
11/20/2007 12:03 PM
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Housing, credit markets may hurt economy
WASHINGTON – Nov. 19, 2007 – The painful collapse of the housing market along with the credit crunch will weigh down economic growth in the final three months of this year and cause economic activity to lag in 2008.
It all means that the risk of a recession has increased, economic forecasters say.
The latest look-ahead from the National Association for Business Economics says the gross domestic product is on track to expand at just a 1.5 percent pace from October through December. If that proves correct, it would mark a sizable decline from the July-September rate of 3.9 percent.
The group’s new fourth-quarter projection compared with September’s prediction of a 2.5 percent growth rate. The GDP - the value of all goods and services produced in the United States- is considered the best barometer of the country’s economic fitness.
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Market News October 2007 |
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By Allyson Chambers on
10/4/2007 9:25 AM
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Oct. 3, 2007 – State Farm bowed to pressure from Florida officials by agreeing Tuesday to cut customers’ home insurance prices. The agreement also says State Farm can’t drop a homeowner policy because someone doesn’t buy automobile or life insurance from them.
The state Office of Insurance Regulation launched an investigation into Florida’s largest private property and auto insurer recently after the company made a series of moves, including plans proposed this summer to drop property policies of 50,000 customers who live within two miles of the beach.
The agreement calls for State Farm Florida to trim property insurance rates by 2 percent, saving policyholders $23 million on top of another recent 7-percent price cut. The insurer also must return millions the insurer overcharged customers.
With the state sending a strong message to State Farm, other companies are taking notice.
Though the state insurance department ...
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Latest news on the Fed |
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By Allyson Chambers on
9/10/2007 11:58 AM
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Fed: Credit crunch effects limited
WASHINGTON – Sept. 7, 2007 – A painful credit crunch is taking its worst toll on the already ailing housing market, while its impact on the rest of the economy so far seems limited, the Federal Reserve reported Wednesday.
Both Wall Street and Main Street have anxiously awaited the Fed’s survey of business conditions for clues about what the central bank will do regarding interest rates on Sept. 18, its next regularly scheduled meeting.
Economists increasingly believe the Fed will lower a key interest rate, now at 5.25 percent, by at least one-quarter of percentage point at that meeting to protect the economy from the credit crisis. The Fed has not lowered this rate in four years.
“Outside of real estate, reports that the turmoil in financial markets had affected economic activity during the survey period were limited,” the Fed’s report said.
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Market News August 2007 |
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By Allyson Chambers on
8/13/2007 8:30 AM
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Anxious home builders pile on incentives
NEW YORK – Aug. 10, 2007 – With the housing market looking increasingly frail, home builders and real estate agents are going to new extremes to attract buyers, dangling lavish incentives and slashing prices.
In Boca Raton, Fla., Gordon Homes is offering to pay two years of property taxes and insurance – worth as much as $150,000 on houses priced as high as $2.5 million – for buyers of completed homes at its upscale Azura development. In Richmond, Va., Orleans Homebuilders Inc. is offering “Sizzling Summer Sale Savings” that include as much as $100,000 off the cost of upgrades ranging from granite countertops to a conservatory. And in Medford, Ore., seller Diane Adams, a real estate agent, is offering to pay four months of mortgage payments on the $975,000 house she and her home-builder husband constructed on 20 acres near Crater Lake.
“I’d also negotiate a lower pri ...
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UF survey: Florida’s housing market suffers setback |
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By Allyson Chambers on
6/19/2007 11:14 AM
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GAINESVILLE, Fla. – June 19, 2007 – Florida’s housing market, thought to be stabilizing earlier this year, deteriorated in the latest quarterly survey conducted by the University of Florida (UF), a situation likely brought on by uneasiness about lending practices, insurance rates and the state’s property tax structure, according to UF analysts.
“Like the graying skies over the state tainted by drought-driven brush fires, the mood for Florida real estate has grown more somber since January,” says Wayne Archer, director of UF’s Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies. “Perhaps the implications of the subprime ‘meltdown’ are creating a disquieting haze; perhaps anxiety over property taxes and high insurance rates are shrouding Florida’s otherwise sunny outlook. In any case, there are few signs of improvement.”
Following the January survey results, Archer advised Florida’s hopeful homebuyers to act immediately in buying single-family residential housing; but that has changed ...
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Market News
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