Refinancing Is ON!

I do the best I can to keep up on all the real estate news and many of the headlines these days are about refinancing. Check out these recent articles.

Market Watch  Applications filed to refinance an existing mortgage rose an unadjusted 41.5% last week, compared with the week before.

U S News & World Report The Mortgage Bankers Association on Tuesday jacked up its 2009 forecast for mortgage originations to reflect the Fed's recent moves to engineer lower mortgage rates. The group now expects mortgage originations to total $2.78 trillion this year

Market Watch 30 Year Mortgage Rate at 4.85%

Having the mortgage industry get busy again will help our economy in many ways.

My biggest concern is, are they ready for it?

In the last few years this industry has seen it's workforce shrink significantly. This happened in the form of layoffs and of course the closing of many mortgage lenders. So handling the increase in business will be tough for the present staff to accomplish.  I know this to be true in Santa Barbara.

The other piece of the puzzle is even though applications are up, will this reflect in actual closings being up as significantly? Borrowers are having a harder time qualifying and of course properties may not be worth what borrowers are expecting them to be worth.

The bottom line to me though is if you can borrow now and need to borrow now GO FOR IT!