Archive for May 2021
With mortgage rates under 3%, homeowners race to refinance
Mortgage rates below 3% have brought homeowners stampeding back to the refinance market. A sharp rise in refi demand is driving an increase in overall mortgage applications, a new report shows. Refinancing to take advantage of mortgage rates that remain far below historical averages can be a smart play. Because with the economy recovering and over 116…
Read MoreHousing Market On Fire
A decade after the housing market emerged from a deep downturn, housing is hot again. Indeed, home values are soaring to new highs. With its double-digit appreciation and rampant bidding wars, the latest real estate party has some eerie similarities to the last one. “It’s clearly the strongest housing market that we’ve seen since the global…
Read MoreZillow: Housing Gains Could Grow Black Wealth More Than $500B in a Decade
Zillow, Seattle, said incremental increases in homeownership rates and home values among Black households would help shrink the current $3 trillion racial wealth gap by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. Today’s typical Black household has only about 23 percent of the wealth of a typical white household, down from 34.6 percent…
Read MoreFHFA releases new refi option for low-income borrowers
Following an incredible year for refinances that mostly benefited wealthier borrowers, the Federal House Finance Agency announced it is implementing a new refi product that targets low-income borrowers with single-family mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to the regulatory agency, this new product will assist borrowers who were less likely to take advantage of 2020’s historically low rates. Under the…
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