[mEDITate-OR:
not see the real meaning of these stories...
bcuz it may not be what they want you to think it is...
First article is understood ONLY if you remember that a few weeks ago the interest on TBills jumped up a lot...
and that drove up RE interest rates.
However two week ago TBills interest rate dropped, a lot.
so that while RE interest rates were reported to U.S. LAST week as going up, we KNEW that they would drop THIS week.
They went up bcuz the FED has stopped buying FMae&FMac Securities and nobody knew, precisely, what would happen.
What DID happen was that other U.S. investors stepped up and bought them, driving the price up & yield down.
The second article is about The Foreclosure Surprise...
while nobody predicted the size of the surge, we knew that it HAD to happen, sometime.
there were too many reported PRE-foreclosures..., and too few modifications.
IF the lenders/banks are now going to purge their bad RE loans, we are in for one Hell of a ride.
This year is the re-set year for pay-option ARMS, where nobody paid even the interest accruing.
More foreclosures, more strategic defaults, more short sales..., more homes needing a home.
Ugly.
The third article is a mixed message.
Single family homes starts declined, again.
Multi-family units surged almost as much as they declined last month - a wash.
The fourth article is about an interesting "rural" home program...
that is ending, due to no mo money.
Sad, but small towns need this, almost as badly as they need high speed net access.
========== stories, with emphasis added
Mortgage rates drop, but still above 5 percent
30-year fixed loan is now 5.07 percent, down from 5.21 percent last week
Rates for long-term mortgages dropped this week but still remained above 5 percent, Freddie Mac said Thursday.
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Foreclosure rates surge, biggest jump in 5 years
‘On pace to see more than 1 million bank repossessions this year’
A record number of U.S. homes were lost to foreclosure in the first three months of this year. RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.
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Housing starts hit highest level since Nov. 2008
The Commerce Department says housing starts rose 1.6 percent
Housing construction posted a better-than-expected performance in March, rising to the highest level in 16 months.
Groundbreaking for single-family homes slipped 0.9 percent last month to an annual rate of 531,000 units
after rising 5.7 percent in February.
Starts for the volatile multifamily segment surged 18.8 percent to a 95,000-unit annual pace
after falling 21.6 percent the prior month.
New building permits, which give a sense of future home construction, jumped 7.5 percent to a 685,000-unit pace last month — the highest level since October 2008
Permits were up 34.1 percent from March 2009, the biggest year-on-year gain since February 1992.
New home completions fell 3.1 percent to a record low 656,000 units.
The inventory of total houses under construction dropped 1.4 percent to an all-time low of 489,000 units in March
the total number of units authorized but not yet started soared 7.5 percent to 103,200 units — the highest level since June.
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Program for rural homebuyers is nearly broke
Agriculture Dept. loans aim to keep buyers from moving to bigger cities
A federal loan program that has helped hundreds of thousands of Americans buy homes in rural areas is about to run out of money, potentially crippling the real estate market in small communities.
USDA's Rural Development program provides 30-year fixed-rate mortgages at market rates.
Buyers do not have to put any money down, unlike loans from the better known Federal Housing Administration, which requires a down payment of 3.5 percent.
And unlike FHA loans, there are no monthly mortgage insurance premiums in the USDA program.
To be eligible, people must be in communities with fewer than 20,000 residents and live outside metropolitan areas.
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