Rates for our lovable POV* came out today and stayed steady with no major Wholesale Lenders repricing one way or the other. Conforming Loans (up to $417K) are at 4.75% and Jumbo Conforming (up to $729,750.00 here in most of the San Francisco Bay Area) at 5.0%. SUPER Jumbos (usually up to $2 million) at 5.875%. As always questions or 
comments welcomed at lololoans@yahoo.com
Do the Tighten Up! Great old R&B song with some funky geeetar. Oh! Sorry. I went away there for a moment. The Lenders are doing the Tighten Up as disclosed in this very nugget a few issues ago. It is now officially harder to qualify for a mortgage than it was in December of last year. The main issue is the Debt to Income Ratio. Learn it. Love it. Live it. It is one of THE major qualifiers that will determine if you qualify or not. And, drumroll please… the formula is thus: 1) Add up all your income per month. ALL of it. Alimony and net income from rentals/investment properties as well. If your income varies then average it over the last 2 years (remember, you will have to document it). 2) Add up what you owe each month. Housing (mortgage or rent) Credit Cards, any loan payments. 3) Now divide the dollar amount of 2 into the dollar amount of 1. I mean STEP 2 into step 1. That is your debt-to-income ratio or DTI as we call it in the biz..Anything MORE than 45% is going to be tough going as Fannie Mae set the limit at 45%.
I know not who the Natural Resources Defense Council is, but they have put a study out there to add this component into one’s DTI calculations: One’s commute costs. If that were the case then it is going to affect almost everyone in the Major Metro regions of the country so watch out! Here is the article from the SF Gate: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/01/29/BUFR1BOJ9I.DTL.
* POV = Plain, Old Vanilla Home Loan: 30yr fixed, Single Family Residence, Owner Occupied, at least 20% equity, good hygiene and no bling bling from that HELOC you took out a few years ago.
For more info email me at lololoans@yahoo.com