Carl Rizzuto's (crizzuto) Blog

Jobs Report Due Friday; Mortgage Rates Expected To Change If you’re out shopping for a home this week, or trying to lock a mortgage rate, with Friday comes home affordability risk. Consider locking your mortgage rate today. The March Non-Farm Payrolls report is due for release Friday morning and ...

FHA Mortgage Insurance Premiums Increasing April 9, 2012 Planning to use an FHA-backed mortgage for your next home loan? You might want to get your application in gear today. Beginning next week, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is changing the way it charges mortgage insurance to U.S. ho...

Mortgage Rates Fall Back Below 4% After a brief run-up two weeks ago, mortgage rates are back below 4 percent. It’s good news for home buyers and mortgage rate shoppers of Jupiter because with lower mortgage rates come lower mortgage payments. According to Freddie Mac’s weekly Primary Mortgage Ma...

Case-Shiller Shows Uneven Recovery For U.S. Housing Recent data suggests that the U.S. housing market is in recovery. However, the data also shows this to be an uneven recovery. According to the monthly S&P/Case-Shiller Index, for example, home values rose in three of 20 tracked markets between D...

New Home Sales Slip In February Sales of “new homes” fell to the lowest levels in four months last month. According to the Census Bureau’s monthly New Home Sales report, 313,000 new homes were sold in February 2012 on a seasonally-adjusted, annualized basis, representing a 1.6% drop from the mont...

Building Permits On The Rise The new construction housing market appears primed for growth this season. According to the Census Bureau, the number of single-family building permits issued in February rose to 472,000 on a seasonally-adjusted, annual basis, marking the highest building permit tally...

Existing Home Sales Stay Strong; Spring Season Underway The market for home resales stays strong. Despite sparse home inventory, the National Association of REALTORS® reports that 4.59 million existing homes were sold in February on a seasonally-adjusted, annualized basis. An “existing home” is a...

Loans For Underwater Homeowners : HARP 2.0 Now Available The new, revamped HARP program is now available in New Jersey and nationwide. It was officially released Saturday, March 17, 2012 by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. HARP is an acronym. It stands for Home Affordable Refinance Program. HARP is th...

A Simple Explanation Of The Federal Reserve Statement (March 13, 2012) Tuesday, the Federal Open Market Committee voted to leave the Fed Funds Rate unchanged within its current target range of 0.000-0.250 percent. For the fourth consecutive month, the Fed Funds Rate vote was nearly unanimous. Jus...