The Veridian Blog

Hello Fellow Americans:

The mortgage refi-bonanza kicked into full-swing last week as the Fed support of the mortgage industry opened up the floodgates for new refinance applications.  The 10-year note hit an all-time low of 2.50% as the economy continued to show extremely dire signs of weakness capped off by Friday’s release of November employment figures.  Payrolls dropped by 533,000, which was the largest monthly decline since December 1974, bringing the year-to-date total to 1.9 million jobs.  The unemployment rate increased to 6.7% - a 0.2% jump from October. 

This week’s important data comes Friday morning with the release of November’s Retail Sales report, which measures consumer spending.  Since consumer spending makes up 2/3 of the economy, any significant or surprising data can potentially impact mortgage rates. 

Remember that the 2009 Conforming loan limits are already in effect – loan amounts up to $625,500 are eligible for sale to the GSEs.  In similar fashion to last year’s “Jumbo-Conforming” loans, nearly all lenders have implemented a third pricing tier for loan amounts between the traditional conforming loan limit of $417,000 and $625,500.