Delaware mortgage rates weekly mortgage market update for the week of March 11, 2013, by John Thomas with Primary Residential Mortgage in Newark, Delaware. John is the Newark, Delaware Mortgage Branch Manager and the author of the book, Your Guide to Buying Your First Home in Delaware. Call 302-703-0727 to get a free mortgage planning consultation or APPLY ONLINE for Delaware mortgage loan.

Delaware mortgage rates moved sharply higher last week to end the week as the Stock Market set another all-time record high! If you look at the mortgage bond chart below you can see that mortgage bonds sold off for the last 6 days in a row moving money out of bonds into stocks. The downward trend in mortgage bonds has resumed as you can see from the arrow. We are recommending very cautiously FLOATING your Delaware mortgage rate to start the week as the damage has already been done. If mortgage bonds can’t recover on Monday morning then we will quickly switch to LOCKING stance.

The big market mover was the release of the Jobs Report for February 2013 on Friday which showed 236,000 jobs created well above expectations of 165,000. This gave the stock market a big boost and pulled money out of the bond market. The unemployment rate also dropped from 7.9% to 7.7% so overall seems like Job Report for February was very good. Thursday we also the release of the weekly initial jobless claims and it came in lower at 340,000 so this caused mortgage bonds to sell off on Thursday which leads into the big sell-off on Friday after the February Jobs Report was released.

If you dig into the Jobs Report, it wasn’t all good. The Jobs created in January was revised down from 156,000 to only 119,000. The unemployment rate only dropped because fewer people are looking for work not because more people are back to work. This can be seen when we look at the Labor Force Participation Rate which measures how many eligible workers are actually working and that number has gone down again to 63.5% and is at the lowest level since September 1981!

In housing news, CoreLogic reported that home prices increased by 0.7% from December to January and that the year over year price increase was 10% higher from a year ago. This shows that the housing market is still on the path to recovery. The big driver of upward price pressure is the very low inventory of homes available for home buyers. We are seeing multiple offer situations again in the Delaware market and buyers are bidding over the asking price to ensure they win the bid.

In Europe we saw last week a new bailout victim has arisen as the tiny nation of Cyprus now needs its banks bailed out to the tune of $22 Billion as it lost lots of money on Bad Loans to Greece. How this plays out will have a big effect on the rest of European countries that are in trouble as if the bailout is too good for Cyprus, other countries like Portugal and Ireland may want to renegotiate their bail-out terms.

I am recommending FLOATING  your Delaware Mortgage Rate to see if mortgage bonds can rebound higher and move rates lower. Call 302-703-0727 to schedule a free mortgage consultation to get pre-approved for a mortgage to purchase a home or to refinance your existing mortgage to lower your rate and save thousands of dollars in interest. There are several special governments refinance programs to help underwater Delaware homeowners refinance. There is the FHA Streamline Refinance Program, the VA IRRRL Streamline Refinance Program, and there is the HARP 1.0 and HARP 2.0 refinance programs. Call us or e-mail us now to get more information or you can APPLY ONLINE.

The next Free Delaware First Time Home Buyer Seminar is Saturday, March 16, 2013, in Newark, Delaware and Tuesday, March 19, 2013, in Dover, Delaware. Register by calling 302-703-0727 or Register online at http://www.delawarehomebuyerseminar.com/

Then next Free Maryland First Time Home Buyer Seminar is Saturday, March 23, 2013, in Towson, Maryland. Register by calling 410-412-3319 or Register online at http://www.MarylandHomeBuyerSeminars.com

If you would like to apply for a Mortgage Loan, you can APPLY ONLINE HERE, you can call John Thomas at 302-703-0727.

John R. Thomas – NMLS 38783

Certified Mortgage Planner – Primary Residential Mortgage, Inc.

302-703-0727 DE Office / 610-906-3109 PA Office / 410-412-3319 MD Office

248 E Chestnut Hill Rd, Newark, DE 19713