MLS Real Estate & Listings Blog

Some progress this week by the authorities has helped mortgage rates fall to the 5.75 percent area for the first time since January. However, the improvement is limited to vanilla "agency" loans, the jumbo and even agency ARM markets still broken. The credit crunch is still alive, growing tighter, and the financial system is unstable.  more…

read more

[Read more →]

Thornburg Mortgage Inc.’s five largest creditors have agreed to give the "super jumbo" lender a one-year reprieve from margin calls if it can raise nearly $1 billion in seven business days.

Thornburg is offering 12 percent interest to anybody willing to buy notes that will mature on April 1, 2015. The notes would be convertible into common stock at 75 percents per share, the lender said in a regulatory filing.  more…

read more

[Read more →]

The collapse of Bear Stearns this morning has pulled the 10-year Treasury yield to 3.42 percent, but lowest-fee mortgages are still stuck above 6 percent. Mortgage improvement was inhibited by fire sales elsewhere (Thornburg and Carlyle), and by Bear’s mortgage exposure, the Street’s largest. As one of the Fed’s 20 "primary dealers," Bear has received instant bailout, but its mortgage portfolio still overhangs the market.  more…

read more

[Read more →]