C21Mike's Real Estate Blog (San Francisco Bay Area)

You may have heard that it has been a pretty volatile past 2 weeks for the mortgage market!  What has happened is that Wall St. investors have panicked and have severely cut back on their purchases of Mortgage Backed Securities(MBS).  This is due to a combination of rising delinquencies and home price depreciation. 

Some lenders have even shut down due to liquidity issues in getting loans sold on the secondary market.  Other lenders have raised rates to meet an increased rate of return demanded by the investors who buy these loans and some have restricted guidelines further. Jumbo and "Alt-A"/subprime loans have taken a bigger hit than Conforming Agency (FannieMae/FreddieMac) product. 

What does that mean to you??  It simply means that the loan program that you may have previously been pre-qualified or even pre-approved for may simply NOT exist today! Changes are occurring on a daily basis.  You should visit with your loan officer again and confirm current availability of product and the stability of the funding institution. Alternatively, if you don't have a relationship with a loan officer, just ask me...I know quite a few in the area.