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Paraphrasing Ferris Bueller, mortgage rates move fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you might miss them. Mortgage rates changed every 4 hours, 12 minutes in May 2011.
For the second time in 10 weeks, Fannie Mae is toughening its mortgage guidelines again. Again. According to an internal Fannie Mae document, a review of the group's current "risk appetite, eligibility requirements, mortgage insurance options, and pricing" spawned changes spanning credit scoring, income requirements, loan-level pricing adjustments.
In housing, the basic law of Supply and Demand bestowed upon buyers an unbelievable amount of negotiation leverage. Want a lower sales price? Just ask for it. Need your closing costs paid for? Write it into your offer letter. Want a quick closing? Sure, whatever you need. But the Buyer Heyday may be over. At least, that's what recent data suggests.
You likely know this already but mortgage rates have soared since Memorial Day. Soared. Strangely, it's the most improbable turn of events that everybody and their mother saw coming. The root of the rise rests in inflation. As in, the fear of. And this run on rates had been predicted as far back as December 16, 2008 when the Federal Reserve first dropped the Fed Funds Rate to near 0 percent.
