Google has built built out its mortgage rate searches by launching a comparison tool for consumers. Lenders who want to be in searches must pay for the privilege. More Jumbo News Here is some company news of note. Springleaf, an offshoot of American General Finance, is planning to raise $500 million for nonconforming/non-agency loan financing. [...]

Jobless Claims Up This morning’s weekly Jobless Claims showed an increase to 457,000, slightly higher than expected, and the 4-week moving average is up 2k to 456k. Non-farm productivity came in at +1.9%. Unit Labor Costs were -.1% after adjusting for productivity. After this news and the Fed announcement yesterday (see below), stocks and mortgage [...]

Why Banks Aren’t Lending More Why aren’t large depository banks loosening their credit guidelines and lending more money? Market watchers suggest that one reason is the buy-back issue: FNMA & FHLMC have sizable losses on bad loans and are considering forcing eleven large lenders (the biggest being BofA and Chase) to buy back loans which [...]

How To Leave Your Underwater Home Fannie Mae launched a new consumer website, KnowYourOptions.com, to educate homeowners about their options to avoid foreclosure and how to get help. There’s an accompanying site for lenders who want marketing materials to promote these KnowYourOptions features. Treasury Auctions Next Week The Treasury will sell $34 billion of 3-yr [...]

How To Get A Quick 5-Point Credit Score Gain Here’s a tip of the day: if a borrower needs an additional 1-5 pts on a FICO score to qualify for a particular home loan program, with the borrower’s permission use the painless 5 year electronic opt-out on www.OptOutPrescreen.com. Apparently it has a positive impact on [...]

Rates Benefit on Stock Weakness The drop in the equity markets yesterday, and possibly again today, certainly helped the flow of funds into “safer” investments – such as Treasuries and MBS’s. But we also had some economic news of note, the first being Pending Home Sales. The index was up 5.3% in March, with sales [...]

Anyone looking for a job should go to www.jpmorganchase.com/careers. According to the San Antonio Business Journal, Chase Bank plans to hire 1,200 mortgage loan officers in 23 states nationwide by the end of 2010. (Of course, that averages out to 100 per month, or four per state per month, but what the heck – they’re [...]

After hearing about Fannie D4L’s program (Deed for Lease), my cousin made sure that Fannie owned his loan (http://loanlookup.fanniemae.com/loanlookup/), and then called them because he was having trouble with his water heater’s pilot light. As you can imagine, the call didn’t go very far up Fannie’s org chart. Many are viewing the program somewhat skeptically, [...]

Starbucks is reportedly adding alcohol to the menu at one of its stores. When asked why, a spokesperson for Starbucks said, “Because sober people don’t pay eight bucks for a cup of coffee.” I wouldn’t either, and given today’s GDP numbers, neither would many others. GDP, which measures the value of all goods and services [...]

Over the weekend my daughter and a friend had a lemonade stand on the street. They weren’t selling much lemonade for 50 cents a cup, so they decided to increase the price to 75 cents a cup. I told them that is not how economics works. My daughter replied, “The price of a postage stamp [...]