Texas Mortgage Rates: Is It A Good Time To Refinance In Austin?
Texas Mortgage Rates: Is it a good time to refinance in Austin? Are you a Texas homeowner that has been thinking about refinancing? Texas mortgage refinance rates are still low. Now is the time to refinance before the mortgage interest rates start to go back up. We’re a local Austin mortgage company that has been successfully assisting people all over Texas with their mortgage refinance needs and goals. We can help you, today! Give us a call, today!
Austin: 512-996-8194 Houston: 713-589-2244
Today’s Rates in Austin, Texas as of 04/11/2009 
Mortgage Rates Interest Rate APR
Conforming Home Loans:
30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rate 4.875% 5.086%
20-Year Fixed Mortgage Rate 5.125% 5.416%
15-Year Fixed Mortgage Rate 4.625% 4.989%
Texas Jumbo Home Loans: (Amounts that exceed $417,000)
30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rate 6.500% 6.651%
Texas FHA Home Loans: (loan limits vary by county)
30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rate 5.000% 5.645%
Texas Mortgage Refinance Home Equity Loan
Mortgage refinance rates go up slightly: 
When mortgage refinance rates rise after a sustained fall, borrowers tend to jump off the fence. That happened last week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Applications for home loans advanced modestly.
“While credit guidelines remain stringent, there are plenty of qualified folks who are putting more money back in their pockets by locking in a low mortgage interest rate,” says Bob Walters, chief economist for Quicken Loans. “Incentives like the First-Time Homebuyer Credit are helping to generate increased purchase activity.”
http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/04092009_freddie_mac_rates.asp
There are other incentives out there besides the first-time buyer tax credit. One is home prices. According to the National Association of Realtors, almost half of home resales are “distressed” transactions: foreclosed houses and short sales. Typically, they sell for about 20 percent less than comparable homes, according to the Realtors.
Another sales incentive would be lower mortgage rates. They could be — maybe should be — even lower. The rates on mortgage loans are related to yields on mortgage-backed securities. The borrower’s rate reflects a markup over the yields on mortgage-backed securities — and that markup has been higher than normal this year.
Mortgage refinance rates arguably could be a quarter of a percentage point lower, ballparks Dick Lepre, loan consultant for Residential Pacific Mortgage in San Francisco. With so much consolidation in the industry over the last two years, a few huge lenders dominate the market. “They’re all trading profit for market share,” Lepre says.
http://mylendingplace.com:80/mortgage/rates/texas/
If a bank did cut mortgage-rate margins in a bid for larger market share, the others likely would follow. Then all the banks would have the same market shares as before, but would be making less money. In effect, banks are milking mortgage customers as one of the few sources of profit available. The Federal Reserve and the FDIC don’t mind — they want banks to be profitable and stable.
The message might be getting through to borrowers that 30-year fixed mortgage rates are unlikely to sink well below 5 percent for any sustained period, except for a few lucky, well-qualified borrowers.
“We’re not going to 4 percent, so take advantage of the opportunity while you can,” says Jim Sahnger, mortgage consultant for Palm Beach Financial Network in Stuart, Fla.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=abS1N9zdTxtA
Sahnger worries that homeowners will wait for interest rates to fall further before applying to refinance — and by the time they apply, their houses will have lost so much value that they no longer can qualify for a standard mortgage refinance.
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/mortgages/mortgage-analysis.aspx
A good thing finally came to an end. Mortgage refinance rates went up this week, after a four-week slide that sent rates to lows that hadn’t been seen in more than 50 years.
The benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose 7 basis points, to 5.2 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 0.47 discount and origination points. One year ago, the mortgage index was 5.96 percent; four weeks ago, it was 5.37 percent.
The benchmark 15-year fixed-rate mortgage rose 2 basis points, to 4.75 percent. The benchmark 5/1 adjustable-rate mortgage rose 4 basis points, to 5.27 percent.
In the nearly 24-year history of Bankrate’s weekly rate survey, the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage has been lower just twice — and those two times were the previous two weeks. The all-time low in Bankrate’s survey was last week’s average of 5.13 percent. http://www.bankrate.com/finance/mortgages/rate-roundup.aspx
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