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Mortgage rates fall even further this week
Mortgage rates have plunged to levels last seen in the refinance boomlet of 2004. Homeowners are getting the message, contacting lenders and brokers in big numbers. The benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell 18 basis points, to 5.57 percent, according to the Bankrate.com national survey of large lenders. A basis point is one-hundredth of 1 percentage point. The mortgages in this week's survey had an average total of 0.33 discount and origination points. One year ago, the mortgage index was 6.32 percent; four weeks ago, it was 6.31 percent. The last time the benchmark 30-year fixed rate was lower was March 24, 2004, when it was 5.46 percent.
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Poll: Little sympathy for mortgage woes
A U.S. poll indicates only a quarter of adults think the government should provide financial help to people who can't pay their mortgages.
The Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive Personal Finance Poll found 42 percent are opposed to bailing out those who are at risk of foreclosure, including 22 percent who said they were strongly opposed.
A majority of those surveyed, however, agreed mortgage brokers should be better regulated.
The survey of 2,082 U.S. adults at least 18 years of age was conducted Dec. 10 and 12.
Half of those surveyed said mortgage lenders and brokers were most responsible for the trouble in the housing market and mortgage business, 21 percent said government regulators, 16 percent said home buyers and 11 percent said someone else, Harris Interactive said in a release. More>>
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Sale of Countrywide Ends Brief L.A. Era
Bank of America�s $4.1 billion buyout of Calabasas-based Countrywide Financial Corp. announced earlier this month puts the exclamation point on perhaps the most rapid meltdown of an industry in Los Angeles County history. For five years, mortgage finance was one of the fastest growing industries in Southern California, creating tens of thousands of jobs, pouring billions of dollars into the local economy and making Los Angeles and Orange counties the nation�s leading center of mortgage finance.
And faster than it came, it went.
Santa Monica-based Fremont General Corp., Orange-based Ameriquest Mortgage Co. and Irvine-based New Century Financial Corp. are all out of the mortgage lending business, at least as they practiced it. Countrywide has been whacked, and Pasadena-based IndyMac Bancorp is struggling, laying off a quarter of its workers last week. More>>