Mortgage NewsGreg McBride from BankRate discusses the mortgage meltdown and Suzy Orman give their different points of view on the Federal Reserve’s rate cuts and how it helps the homeowners, consumers and mortgage lenders! Mortgage interest rates remain low for conforming and FHA home loans.
In a recent article, Barry Habib, CEO of the Mortgage Market Guide talks about the challenges mortgage lenders and brokers have with their clients after the Federal Reserve lowers key rates. Mortgage lenders in every state report similar challenges after Fed meetings. Claudio Pereida, a mortgage broker in Orange County said, “every time the Fed lowers the rates, my clients call me and expect their mortgage in process to have the rate reduced.” He continued, “locked or unlocked borrowers really believe that if the Fed lowers interest rates that their rate showed be dropped as well.” He tries to explain to them that it doesn’t work that way but the customers seem to feel that they aren’t being treated fairly. Many refinancing borrowers call their loan officer and demand a rate reduction. Many patient homeowners are perplexed as to why mortgage refinancing rates have not dropped during Fed’s last six rate cuts.
According to Bryan Dornan, a mortgage banker from California, “In most cases, the home lenders anticipate the Fed cutting the rate and actually lower the rates prior to the Federal Reserve meeting and announcing the key rate discounting.” This can be challenging to explain to borrowers who have watched a three point reduction by the Federal Reserve yet have no positive effect on mortgage rates for refinancing purposes. How many mortgage lenders and brokers out there have lost borrowers with loans in process for similar issues?
Despite the subprime mortgage meltdown, online lead generator, Lead Planet, is reporting an increase substantial in consumer requests for home loans. The California based mortgage marketing company said it received a record number of homeowner requests for refinancing in the 4th quarter of 2007 and the 1st quarter of 2008. The mortgage loan quotes during the first quarter of 2008 were up an astonishing 164% over the first quarter of 2007.
The Lead Planet ackowledges the increasing number of loan defaults and interest rate cuts as the primary reasons for the increased loan application volumes this year. According to Dan Ambrose, “Most of the mortgage companies that are left have shifted to reverse mortgages or FHA mortgage lending.”
Founded in 1999, the Lead Planet provides quality mortgage leads to lending professional. They remain a direct lead provider who generates loan applications directly from the consumer. The Lead Planet generates their leads on the internet through serach Engines like, Yahoo, MSN, Google and AOL. Ambrose “maintains that they do not buy leads from other lead aggregators.”