This is GREAT NEWS and a temporary gift to us who are buying real estate and those of us who have 2 loans on our property here in the Santa Barbara area now have a possible opportunity to refinance into one loan.  By raising the conforming loan limit to $729,750.  this allows buyers to obtain the best price available for an owner occupied purchased property all in one loan rather than having a combination of loans, at different interest rates like before.

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“I DON’T MEASURE A MAN’S SUCCESS BY HOW HIGH HE CLIMBS…BUT HOW HIGH HE BOUNCES WHEN HE HITS BOTTOM.” General George S. Patton And the General himself would certainly consider Bonds to be a success last week, as they moved lower to hit a technical “bottom” at the 200-day Moving Average, but then bounced significantly higher throughout the course of the week, helping fixed home loan rates improve by about .25 to .375%.

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Pertinent information from Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, delivered by our Santa Barbara Multiple Listing Service: A bill likely to raise the conforming loan amount from $417,000 to $729,000 is due to be signed into law today!!!

This is even more good financial news for folks looking for an opportunity to buy a home in today’s market!!
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As most of you know the stimulus bill which includes raising the conforming limits is due to be signed this week by the President.  This should be effective fairly soon and run through at least the end of this year.

As you can see from the chart below, a good portion of California is expected to get the maximum allowed limit of $729,750.
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“A GOOD CONSPIRACY IS UNPROVABLE. I MEAN, IF YOU CAN PROVE IT, IT MEANS THEY SCREWED UP SOMEWHERE ALONG THE LINE.” Mel Gibson as Jerry Fletcher in the movie, “Conspiracy Theory” And those who believe in the conspiracy theory that the Fed has access to economic data in advance of the official release dates sure felt their position was proven correct last week…let’s take a look.

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“SURVEY SAYS…?” Richard Dawson’s classic line on Family Feud is exactly the question that was on many minds at 8:29am ET last Friday morning, awaiting the official results of the November Jobs Report. After Automatic Data Processing (ADP) had released their hot numbers earlier in the week, indicating well over 200,000 new jobs created - traders and analysts began to wonder if Friday’s official number might not come in far higher than the expectations of 70,000.

So when the results came in, it did show 94,000 new jobs created during November - but prior month’s revisions took back 48,000 jobs previously counted in September and October. So…given this overall tame to semi-weak Jobs number - which generally would cause Bonds and home loan rates to improve - what happened that caused Bond pricing to worsen, and home loan rates to increase by .25%? (more…)