Bored of dinner-and-a-movie dates? Valentine’s Day in Toronto
February 7th, 2010
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By Sarah Bryant
There#8217;s a lot of activities you and your significant other partake in on Valentine#8217;s Day, which falls on a Sunday this year. Here#8217;s a few date-night ideas.
Go for a romantic skate The public skating rink at Nathan Philips Square is open until 10 p.m. all week, and the night before Valentine#8217;s Day Harbourfront [...]img alt=”" border=”0″ src=”http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=muddyyork.comblog=5188131post=2180subd=centraltorontorealestateref=feed=1″ /img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MuddyYorkARealEstateBlog/~4/TFRhUY2LGOw” height=”1″ width=”1″/
Categories: Real Estate
Yesterday bonds soared after the initial unemployment claims came in higher than expected. This normally means lower mortgage rates as a result, but yesterday rates didn’t budge because lenders didn’t want to lower rates ahead of the big jobs report. The report released this morning showed a loss of 20,000 jobs (worse than expected) but the unemployment rate dropped from 10% to 9.7% (much better than expected, but based on an entirely different measure). With the two reports contradicting each other, the initial move was for bonds to sell off, largely erasing the gains from yesterday. But by mid morning they switched completely and have improved for the day. This means lower rates. In fact, mortgage rates for the best qualified borrowers are now back in the 4s! No one knows if this will last or not, and all the experts still have a bias toward higher rates in the coming months. But for now we are seeing the best rates of 2010, and if you are in a position to take advantage of these low rates, don’t wait. These may not last. 
through with better mortgage rates. Part of this could be that the market is waiting for the big news tomorrow – the monthly unemployment numbers for January. This is always the most anticipated economic report, and the one that has the most impact on mortgage rates. Lenders are waiting to see how this comes out before taking on more loans at a lower rate. The estimates are for the report to show an increase of 50,000 jobs, but if the report comes in better than expected, the bond market will quickly sell off. On the other hand, if the report is worse than expected, the bond market will continue to improve and lenders will come in with better rates. The trend is positive for today, but everything rides on what happens tomorrow morning.
condo projects as part of the loan process (like the FHA spot loan, but on steroids). But the way it is set up now, the lender is taking on a big risk when they do this. The bigger issue is that they can’t even see all the ways they are taking on extra risk. So the bottom line is that the lenders are waiting on the sidelines to see how HUD deals with their direct approvals before taking on the extra responsibility of improving projects on their own. So for now, if you are looking to buy (or sell) a condo in the Chicago area you have two choices: 
These items are usually verified through a condo questionnaire sent from the lender to the association of management company. One thing to keep in mind is that new projects are continually coming on line with FHA approvals. Every time HUD (or a direct endorsement lender, eventually) approves a unit, all the other units in that project (up to the maximum concentration) will also be placed on the FHA approved condo list. And HUD is bending some to make more projects eligible. When the new guidelines were first released back in October, all projects that weren’t approved in the last year were supposed to be recertified and wouldn’t be included on the approved list until they were. HUD is now giving these properties a one year grace period, so they will be on the list as eligible up until December 7th 2010. The re-approval process for these projects will be much simpler than the process for new projects.
Happy Ground Hogs day! So if the groundhog doesn’t see its shadow does that mean we are in for 6 more weeks of low interest rates? Not a lot happening in the financial markets today, but mortgage bonds are improving and dancing right around a line of resistance. Mortgage bonds are the basis of mortgage rates, so if they do break through this resistance (usually because of bad news of some sort, signs of slowness in the economy or a sell off in stocks), we could be back to the lowest rates of the past year, again. All the experts have pegged the bias toward rates moving higher, so this trend is somewhat of a surprise. Stay tuned for more, but the Ground hog may be on to something.
That’s my optimistic side. The pessimist in me is thinking that winter is never going to end. But all seasons pass eventually, and the low rates we have had over the last year will eventually end, too (how was that for a segue?) Mortgage rates are holding but the trend for the day is negative. Inflation numbers came in just a bit higher than expected, and that’s being attributed as the reason that mortgage bonds are off and the rate trend is pointing up. The real reason probably has more to do with where we are in the range. Over the last few months we have seen rates bounce reliably between the high and low points of the range, so even though there is always a reason for movement, the truth is that traders know to buy when rates look cheap and sell when they get expensive, so the rates stay range bound. But, just as seasons always end, eventually rates will break out of the range. Barring more federal action which we aren’t yet aware of, odds say that when the rates do break out they will head higher.