Nicole's Week in Review

We had some good news and bad news last week, let's start with the good! The national unemployment rate came in better than expected at 10%. Only 11,000 jobs were lost in November, much lower than the 125,000 expected loss, AND the fewest number of jobs lost since December 2007! While this is great news, and sent stocks rallying, it was to the detriment of mortgage bonds which raised rates (that's the bad news, by the way). Overall, rates are about .25% worse than where they were around Thanksgiving time.

Other big news last week was HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan's testimony before Congress. In this testimony, he announced plans to tighten FHA's lending stadards in order to improve its portfolio performance and raise capital reserves to federally mandated levels.

Forecast for the Week

Economic news is light early part of the week, and picks-up mid-week. 10-yr and 30-yr Treasury bills will be auctioned off Wednesday and Thursday. It will be important to watch how this goes as these longer term treasuries compete with mortgage bonds, which can affect mortgage rates. We'll also see Initial Jobless Claims for November and Balance of Trade on Thursday, and Retail Sales on Friday.

Generally speaking, strong economic news affects mortgage rates negatively, and visa versa. If you want to keep up-to-date with breaking real estate and mortgage news, Follow Me on Twitter!

Make it a GREAT week!