Mortgage rates dropped this week!

Freddie Mac reports a decrease in the 30-year fixed mortgage rate to 6.69 percent during the week ended July 26 from 6.73 percent the previous week. Interest on 15-year fixed loans recorded a slight decline to 6.37 percent from 6.38 percent. Meanwhile, the five-year adjustable mortgage rate dipped to 6.3 percent from 6.35 percent, and the one-year ARM tumbled to 5.69 percent from 5.72 percent.

Source: The Wall Street Journal (07/27/07)

See - they are not always going UP!

Lorraine

Pre-Qualified or Pre-Approved?

What's the difference? Confusing prequalification with preapproval can mean disappointment for both a home seller and a buyer. Real estate experts say it's smart to urge buyers to become preapproved by their lender, not just prequalified. For buyers to obtain a bona fide preapproval, they must submit a loan application with the necessary documentation and fee. After the lender verifies and analyzes the application, it will notify the applicant of how much money he can afford to borrow. Armed with that information, the buyer can confidently go home shopping. Prequalifications are simply an estimate of what a buyer can afford. A buyer who assumes that this estimate is accurate and chooses a home based on the information may, in fact, be denied a loan when he actually applies. That results in a situation that wastes his time and can put a seller in an a bad position if they've already turned away a qualified buyer. And, of course, it wastes the real estate agent's time as well.

Search the MLS for Ventura County Real Estate at:
www.VenturaRealEstate.org

Thinking of a mobile home?

If you are thinking of purchasing a mobile home/manufactured home instead of a stick-built home, anything older than built in 1990 will require a 20% down payment. On a $100,000 home, that's $20,000 down. On a $150,000 home, that's $30,000 down. This is just a head's up for those of you that think mobile homes are cheeper to purchase.

See information about mobile home parks in the Ventura area at:
http://www.lorraineburns.com