Despite all the positive forecasts predicting 2007 to be a rebounding year en route to a thriving market in the near future, more undeniable evidence mounts that suggests 2007 may not be much better then its predecessor.
The housing industry basically relies on the mortgage industry, especially as home prices have soared to never-before-seen highs. If people are not applying for mortgages, they are not buying homes, unless that mattress is full of thousand dollar bills.
The article, “Home loan demand drops despite decline in mortgage interest rates,” posted February 7, 2007 on USA Today.com, explains how investors and economists may have reason to worry as a housing rebound probably is not in the near future.
Last year interest rates soared until it peaked at 6.88 percent in late June. Then they fell to under 6.2 percent and forecasters across the country began warning buyers to buy now because the market was rebounding from its correction.
The first month of the new year, you know the year things were supposed to begin heading in the right direction, has produced interesting results about what the immediate future of the overall real estate market will look like.
“The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and purchasing loans, dipped 0.2% the week ended Feb. 2 to 630.1.”
That doesn’t sound like a big deal but considering the market is struggling to head in the right direction, any mortgage origination decline carries extra weight.
“Phillip Neuhart, economic analyst at Wachovia in Charlotte, N.C., said the housing market is going through a ‘rocky stabilization’ right now.”
“‘The weather was certainly a factor in December, particularly housing starts, but that artificially inflated activity,’ he said. ‘Also, builder incentives were helping sales.’”
The real reason the declining mortgage originations is depressing is due to the fact interest rates also dropped last week, which would ideally result in an increase in mortgage originations.
“Borrowing costs on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, excluding fees, averaged 6.23% in the latest week, down 0.06 percentage point from the previous week and the first drop since early January.”
“‘Housing seems to have the wind at its back with long-term interest rates, which were already in the low- to mid-sixes, falling slightly after last week’s Fed announcement, so it’s surprising to see that purchase activity actually tapered in the last week,’ said Bob Walters, chief economist at Quicken Loans, an online mortgage lender in Livonia, Mich.”
It has also recently been reported in numerous publications that interest rates are expected to rise to about 6.5 percent by summertime. If mortgage originations are down while interest rates are low and even declined, what will happen once rates shoot up another 0.3 percent?
“‘Folks with adjustable-rate mortgages see the opportunity, however, and are refinancing into fixed-rate mortgages before their existing mortgages reset to interest rates that are higher than current long-term rates,’ said Walters.”
If you plan on refinancing you should do so now before rates rise.
The one thing that is important to keep in mind though is that even though rates will rise during the summer that is also the time when home buyers tend to come out of their shells and become more active.
For more resources about home mortgage or even about mortgage calculator and especially about mortgage refinancing, please review these links.
Watch the video related to mortgage calculator
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Input your data to calculate your mortgage in Malaysian context.
you can find it in tools on this website
http://www.realestate.com.au
hope this helps
You may want to download free OpenOffice, which includes spreadsheet totally compatible with Microsoft Excel.
http://www.openoffice.org/ (version for Windows and version for Linux both are available to download).
There is a plenty of formulas and even macros suitable for any needs. Some macro could be downloaded from web sites of sharks.
The best solution could be also to not taking any loan at all. Saving account with 4.5% per annum, monthly payments and compound interest is your friend!!! In this way, bank gonna pay you, not vice versa. You cannot get loan with 4.5% interest, right?
So, it can get you your home in not so long time and sets you free. Your heart will be filled with joy and your kids will be grateful to you for not having any debts and financial obligations.
If you are going to need such a specific calculator, you should build your own in Excel.
I found this mortgage calculator a few months ago. You can even download their mortgage calculator to your desktop. check it out.
go to realtor.com it has a great mortgage calculator
I like the calculators on http://www.bankrate.com, but they will not do a search on taxes for you by zip code – there are too many variables for that. If you have a particular property you like often the real estate listing will tell you the taxes for that property, which you could just add on to the mortgage amount. Or else, get the tax rate per $1,000 for the area you want to live in, and use that to bump up the effective cost. For example, if in your area, taxes are $2 per $1,000, and you want to buy a $200,000 house, calculate your mortgage on $200,000 plus an extra payment of $40/month.
For calculators on mortgages, try bankrate.com
They have all kinds of calculators and information, including info on how to figure out when it is worth refinancing.
(does "2 yrs left to go" refers to when you don't have to pay a penalty? If you have many years to go on your mortgage, consider getting a fixed rate if you think interest rates may go up in the future…)
You can even comparison shop for mortgages on bankrate.com.
Theres one here
http://www.hotels-accommodation-europe.co.uk/mortgages.php
View the source code and look for the javascript file that powers it.