Unsecured Loans: Satisfy your needs without risking your asset

Need some extra money for a quick reward, even if you do not own a property that can help you to avail a loan? Do not worry because your wait is over. There was a time when the loans are not readily available to people who do not have a significant ownership of their own in place against the loan amount as security.

It is used to make people disappointed and helpless too because they have no other choice from where they can get some financial help. Money is needed for any purpose, whether it be for commercial use, these educational purposes, home improvement purposes, etc. Now these loans are introduced in the market for people who need money but they The owner of a value of life. Such loans are known as unsecured loans.

Unsecured loans, as the name suggests these loans are inactive must be located on the loan amount as security. They are specially designed for people who do not own a valuable property. The loans are also known as personal loans or unsecured personal loans. They are defined on the basis of a reputation in the market, his salary and credit history. If we critically analyze the situation, it may be easy to feel that while the loans, the lender is higher risk because he has nothing important properties to recover their money if the borrower does not repay the loan amount . Therefore, he requires a higher rate of interest on loan, so he can get his money back soon. Furthermore, the maturity of loans is shorter compared to the unsecured loan. But it is very very good for borrowers because the longer the maturity, so it may be difficult for them to pay the monthly installments to higher interest rates for a longer period, which can certainly affect one's financial and economic life. Maturity usually vary 1-10 years and loan amount range from $ 5,000 to $ 25,000. The paper work for loans, jumped out, so the loans sanctioned quickly.

People have a good credit history as bankruptcy, arrears, default, CCJ and so can also help with loans. So the credit problem is not a problem at all now. Rather, people get a chance to improve their credit history by repaying the loan on time. The loans are ideal for people who need smaller amounts for shorter duration. This is one of the best opportunities for students, tenants and Homeowners. People can take advantage of it loans without risking any of their valuable property is they need not fear the return of their property value if they pay the borrowed amount.


Source

Mortgage Interest Rates: Mortgage Interest Rates Hover Above All Time Low

There were a few big announcements today including the one where the Treasury said they’ll hold a monster $118 billion dollar auction of 2, 5, and 7 year Treasuries next week sure to affect mortgage interest rates. Jobless claims fell as expected this week. The Dow dropped -93.87 (.90%) closing at 10,332.44. Prices of Mortgage Backed Securities of which mortgage interest rates move opposite are flat. The Fed purchased $16 billion in agency Mortgage Backed Securities this week in a continued effort to keep mortgage interest rates low and clear up cash to lend. Freddie Mac said today in their weekly mortgage rates survey that the conforming 30 year fixed interest rate averaged 4.83% Monday through Wednesday of this week, down from 4.91% last week. The benchmark 10 year treasury yield, used to forecast conforming mortgage rates, is down .017 (.051%) and at 3.349% at closing today. The benchmark yield was under 3.2% when 30 year fixed interest rates neared 4.5% about 2 months ago.

Today’s Mortgage Interest Rates
FreeRateUpdate.com researches wholesale mortgage lenders rate sheets to determine current interest rates. This is both the most accurate and unbiased way to determine rates. FreeRateUpdate.com research of wholesale lenders current interest rates shows no change today and no much for mortgage interest rates to go higher.

Current 30 Year Fixed Mortgage Interest Rate
The conforming 30 year fixed mortgage interest rate continues to hold at 4.625% at par. Only a handful of lender’s are offering this rate as the more prominent 30 year fixed interest rate available is 4.75%. Any significant improvement in the secondary mortgage market will drive the 30 year fixed rate to the magic number of 4.5. As mentioned above Freddie Mac reported the average 30 year fixed rate at 4.83% this week.

Other Current Interest Rates
The current 15 year fixed interest rate continues to hold at 4.25%. Closing costs are relatively low on this program due to pricing improvements this week affecting the money lenders are paid for delivering this rate. 5/1 ARM rates are at 3.75%, historically low. 5/1 ARM’s are not recommended for anyone staying in the loan for more than 5 years, or the home for that matter. The current 20 year fixed rate is 4.5%.



Source

Australians grow more upbeat about economy

SYDNEY: Australian consumer sentiment unexpectedly surged for the second straight month in July to reach its best level in 19 months, as households grew more optimistic about an economic recovery.

Adding to the positive mood, government data yesterday showed demand for home loans rising for the eight straight month as record low interest rates and generous government handouts drew more first home buyers to the property market.

The better-than-expected outcomes should reinforce the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) view that the local economy will recover later this year, and lessen the need for further cuts in the cash rate.

“This is unquestionably a stunning result,” said Bill Evans, chief economist at Westpac. “This print for the (Westpac Consumer) index will encourage even more optimism from the RBA.”

The survey of 1,200 people by the Westpac Bank and Melbourne Institute showed the index of consumer sentiment climbed 9.3% in July, the highest reading since December 2007. That was a real surprise to analysts who had expected a pullback after a steep 12.7% jump in June.

The index was now up 23.2% in two months, the biggest such increase since the survey began in 1975.

The improvement was led by consumer assessments of the economic outlook, especially after Australia dodged a “technical recession” in the first quarter and official data have shown the labour market holding up surprisingly well so far.

The measure of economic conditions over the next 12 months rose 19.6%, while that for conditions over the next five years jumped 15.7%.

“Today’s data show that the balance of risks facing the economy continues to shift towards a more positive outlook,” said Josh Williamson, economist at Citi.

That seemed to echo RBA’s own assessment on Tuesday. While keeping the cash rate unchanged at a record low of 3% for the third month, it said the domestic economy was not as weak as expected and sounded more upbeat about a global recovery.

It has slashed the cash rate by 450 basis points since September and retains a scope for lowering rates further. Investors expect another quarter percentage point rate cut in October, but the RBA could quickly reverse gears in the next 12 months, with markets pricing in 50 basis points of rate hikes.

Despite the upbeat data yesterday, there are sizeable downside risks to the economy in coming months.

Household spending is likely to take a hit in the second half of the year as the effect of the government’s cash handouts fades and export earnings drop, reflecting lower commodity prices. Additionally, the global recession has seen businesses cut back on investment and led to mounting fears of job losses. — Reuters

Official labour data for June is due out today and analysts are looking for a drop of 25,000 jobs, after a 1,700 drop in May. The jobless rate is seen rising to 5.9%, a six-year high.

“The real test for the consumer will be in the second half of the year, when the impact of the fiscal stimulus abates,” said Helen Kevans, economist at JP Morgan. “Then, households’ disposable incomes will be squeezed by falling labour income as unemployment rises, and rising petrol prices.”

The government forecasts the jobless rate to top 8.5% by mid-2011 and that will keep pressure on the RBA to maintain an easy monetary policy bias. Historically, it has rarely tightened policy when the jobless rate has been rising.

The relief from aggressive rate cuts was clear in the continuing recovery in demand for housing loans. Official data showed the number of home loans rose by a better-than-expected 2.2% in May, from a month earlier.

Source

Loan Applications Increase Despite Spike in Rates

Mortgage rates climbed in the week ending July 17, yet the demand for loans still managed to increase during the week, according to a weekly industry survey.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said average rates for a 30-year mortgage rebounded from 5.05% to 5.31% last week, erasing the improvement seen in the prior week when rates fell 29 basis points. The jump in rates didn’t put a halt to refinancing or home purchases, however, as both indexes continued moving up from the seven-month low seen three weeks ago.

The Market Composite Index ― which tracks the volume of mortgage applications ― increased 2.8% in the week, moderating the 4-week average to -1.0%.
Refinance-related loans moved up 4.0% in the week and accounted for 55.5% of all loans. In the prior week refinancing jumped 17%. The Purchase Index edged up 1.3% in the week, though on a 4-week average purchases are 1.7% lower.
“It’s been stuck in this low-five range for a number of weeks,” commented chief economist Donald Rissmiller from Strategas Research Partners last week. With the Federal Reserve continuing with its accommodative policy for the medium-term future, rates are likely to continue in that range.

Mortgage rates vary across the country but the state average is below 6% ― an historically low rate ― in all 50 states. According to a report from Zillow.com published yesterday, lenders in Alabama offer the lowest mortgage rate at 5.06%, while rates in Maine are currently the highest at 5.94%.


Source

Mortgage lending, refinancing starting to rise

Local bankers and real-estate agents say the uptick in the housing market has been modest, attributing increases to the first-time homebuyer tax credit being offered through November, the depressing effect foreclosures have had on prices and refinancing of existing loans into lower rates.

Nationally, home sales are growing at their fastest rate in more than eight years after stalling out in the middle of 2008. New-home sales for June were up 11 percent from May.

"It's not coming back as fast as we would like, but it's been a modest increase," Zanesville-area Realtor Jay Butler said. "The phone ringing is better than not having it ringing."

Buyers are starting to take advantage of a federal tax credit that covers 10 percent of the home price or up to $8,000 for first-time buyers. Home sales must be completed before Dec. 1 for buyers to take advantage.

Jeff McLendon, of McLendon Mortgage in Zanesville, said the availability of the tax credit has been a good thing and about 60 percent of the loans his firm has done have been eligible for the credit.

"When that came out, our phones were ringing off the hook. The first thing people were asking is, 'Do I qualify for this?'" McLendon said. "Then they want to know if they can close before the tax credit is up. It's the busiest we've been in four years."

Carl Raines, vice president and local branch manager with Peoples Bank in Zanesville, said one-year comparisons between spring 2008 and the same time period this year show that mortgage financing has doubled in the area.

But a lot of the growth he sees is in residential home refinances, he said.

"We're up in the region, in southeast Ohio. We're losing adjustable rates to people refinancing into fixed rates," Raines said. "But we exceeded our loan goals in February, March, April and May."

He said construction home loans are picking up, which has increased the sales of construction materials.

Raines attributes some of that to the tax credit for first-time homebuyers.

The rate of home repossessions through foreclosures remains high in Muskingum and surrounding counties, but that's also had a positive effect on housing prices for the consumer.

"It's lowered prices significantly, I would say 15 to 20 percent," Butler said. "We have people who are ready and qualified to buy a home, but banks were tight for a good stretch there. The first-time money has helped some. But you've got to have a credit score of 620 or better for a lender to look at you. It comes down to lending ability."

Tom Lyall, president and CEO of Century National Bank in Zanesville, said Century had record lending volume through the first half of 2009, mainly via refinancing.

"But the last couple of months, we've seen a pretty nice increase in home purchases," Lyall said. "Overall volume has been terrific, and the tax credit has taken the strain off of budgets for some people."

But some would like to see more help.

"If the purchaser could get their hands on that credit at the time of sale, it would be so much better," McLendon said. "That money could be used for the down payment or to fix up the home, whatever. If you get the credit after you buy the home, how did that help you buy your home?"

Source

Banks slow to modify mortgages, Treasury reports

Despite the continuing foreclosure crisis, banks have made little progress toward modifying the loans of stressed-out homeowners, drawing fire from advocacy groups who say both financial institutions and the federal government should do more.

In its first report on the Obama administration's efforts to prod lenders to help as many as 4 million homeowners by reducing their mortgage payments, the Treasury Department said just 9% of eligible loans had been changed.

ADS BY GOOGLE
Top Los Angeles Tours
Top 10 Sightseeing Tours of LA. See All LA Tours Here. So Cal & More!
AllLosAngelesTours.com
La Quinta Golf Resort
La Quinta Golf & Country Club Last Minute Bookings
www.LaQuintaGolf.com
New York Hotel Discounts
Compare Prices from 4000+ sites and Save up to 70% on New York Hotels
SideStep.com/New_York_Hotels
Loans were modified even less often by the two mega-banks that dominate the mortgage market: Wells Fargo & Co. reduced payments for only 6% of its eligible home loans under the government's program, and Bank of America Corp. modified just 4%.

The administration, under tremendous pressure to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, has said that despite the low percentage of loans that had been modified under its plan, the program "has made rapid progress in a few short months" and was on track to help 3 million to 4 million eligible borrowers.

But critics say the effort is way behind.

"Congress and the administration need to end their 'pretty please' approach to the banks and instead finally force lenders to work to keep people in their homes," said Kevin Stein, associate director of the California Reinvestment Coalition.

Some of the major lenders whose efforts were documented in the report released Tuesday had better success, such as GMAC and JPMorgan Chase & Co., which racked up 20% modification rates. Others, including Wells Fargo and BofA, said the report didn't reflect their efforts to modify loans outside Obama's Making Home Affordable program. They also said the workings of the 5-month-old program were not clarified until last month, forcing lenders to wait until just a couple of weeks ago to adopt it.

"We did 240,000 loan modifications in the first seven months of the year, of which just over 20,000 are [Obama plan] mods," said Mike Heid, co-president of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.

BofA modified 150,000 loans during the first half of the year without going through the Obama program, plus 28,000 using the government's plan, Barbara Desoer, president of Bank of America home loans, said in a statement.

The government has pledged to provide $75 billion in incentive payments to participating borrowers and mortgage companies.

Under the Obama plan, more than 400,000 modification offers have been extended and more than 230,000 trial modifications have begun, the Treasury Department reported.

But the number of homeowners in distress is huge. Nearly 2 million foreclosure filings were made during the first six months of this year, ranging from default notices to completed foreclosure sales, according to foreclosure data firm RealtyTrac. There were 3.2 million such filings in all of 2008 and 2.2 million in 2007.

Dozens of homeowners have contacted The Times in recent months, complaining about lenders' sluggishness or outright refusals to modify loans. Some homeowners were behind in their payments; others were keeping up by going through their savings, but facing a looming bankruptcy.

Domingo Delgadillo of Antioch, Calif., started out well able to afford the pay-option Wachovia bank loan on his 3,000-square-foot home. But when his real estate business collapsed in 2007, he started making only the minimum payments, causing his loan balance to balloon as the value of his house dropped. He's paying 60% of his gross earnings for the house now and has asked for a modification -- to no avail.

"When I called Wachovia in July to request a loan modification, I was told that they still had not implemented their program," he said. "I do not understand how it is possible."

Reached Tuesday afternoon, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, which agreed to buy Wachovia last year as it teetered near collapse, said she couldn't comment on individual customers or access Delgadillo's records so late in the day. She said that in some cases, loans sold to other parties could be modified only if they were in "imminent default." Delgadillo said he had been told his loan was sold to Bank of New York.

The Obama plan is modeled on a program the FDIC developed to modify mortgages at failed IndyMac Federal Bank in Pasadena. Using incentive payments to lenders and borrowers who agree to loan modifications, it reduces mortgage interest rates and extends the duration of the loans to 40 years. The idea is to try to reduce first mortgage payments, taxes and insurance to 31% of a borrower's gross income.

Participants must fully document their earnings and assets, and the first three months of modification is a trial period. If borrowers make three straight payments on time, showing their willingness and ability to pay, the modification becomes permanent.

Critics say the plan needs to be toughened, calling anew for change in federal law to allow bankruptcy judges to order lenders to reduce the principal owed on home mortgages.

These so-called cramdowns had been supported by President Obama and top officials including Lawrence H. Summers, director of the White House's National Economic Council. But the idea has been repeatedly shot down in Congress, in part because the banking industry vehemently opposes it.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has said he would push for cramdowns if lenders did not show they were modifying more mortgages.

But UC Berkeley economist Kenneth Rosen, who supports voluntary but not court-ordered efforts to lower principal amounts for homeowners, said the federal efforts to prevent foreclosure might show improvement down the line.

"These are early days," Rosen said. "The numbers could be quite different six months from now."


Source

Lowe's Home Improvement "Should Improve its Overtime Policy"

Denton, TX: When George was hired as a designer/sales "specialist" with Lowe's Home Improvement store, he agreed on making only $12 per hour to start. They neglected to tell George that he would be working 50-hour weeks, like most other "specialists" in the store. "According to Lowe's world, specialists don't qualify for overtime," says George, "but I later found out they are violating federal overtime laws."

So what is "special" about a specialist? According to Lowe's it is an exempt position, thus allowing the retail giant to schedule employees such as George 50-plus hours per week with no overtime pay. But George was paid an hourly rate and his job was identical to other "floor" employees who are not classified as specialists and are paid hourly.

George quit his job in 2004, and since then he has done some research online. "I found out that specialists are hourly workers," says George, "and when I was hired, I was paid an hourly wage. The manager at Lowe's told me they could only afford $12 per hour to start, but I figure they can afford a lot more than that with all the overtime they don't have to pay…

"After working at one location for several months I relocated to Las Vegas and they gave me a $2 per hour raise, but I was still getting an hourly rate. The bottom line is that I was led to believe I was hired as an hourly employee. They never said I would be paid so much per year, a salary.

We did get a lunch break and one 15-minute break during the day but I never discussed overtime with my co-workers, partly because I was isolated from everyone else—I just designed and sold kitchens in the kitchen department and only had passing contact with my co-workers. But the main reason had to do with their intimidation factor. Corporations have a way of intimidating their employees. They have the power, they know it and they use it. And I was worried about getting fired.

I never considered asking for overtime because when I talked to anyone, they said the specialist was separate from the regular workers so I just thought this was their corporate setup. But in my previous job as a union carpenter in Chicago, I always got paid time and a half. At that job I had the union backing me up so I knew that I would always get paid overtime—and you could never be intimidated.

I had no idea how many more hours a week I would work over and above the regular 40 hours until I saw the schedule. Throughout my entire employment I worked six days a week, including some Sundays. After working in Vegas for 6 months I quit so I worked at Lowe's for just over a year in total.

I was frustrated because I couldn't stand up to them—that was the bottom line. About half the store comprises specialists and we were all required to work 50 hours per week. I knew about the overtime law—that you are entitled to time and a half over 40 hours per week— but just took it for granted that because I was classified as a specialist I didn't qualify for overtime. I just thought Lowe's corporate interpretation was correct. But that isn't the case."


Source