The DOW is currently down about 133 points, and while several economic reports are out, the biggest one is, again, the Jobless Claims is in at 482k, that is the largest jump in claims in the past 8 months – a pretty big figure.

What does this mean for rates? Well, at the moment, we’re up about 25 bps so you should see a little drop – I’d say about .125% or so.

Remember- Economy bad, rates good.

The Treasury also  just announced next weeks auctions:

Tuesday, $44B of 2 Year Notes
Wednesday, $42B of 5 Year Notes
Thursday, $32B of 7 Year Notes

Yesterday, plastered all over the media, were the changes  in FHA financing. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sick and tired of all this “change” that has been going around lately.

While the majority of the details can be found on my blog, I also wanted to briefly outline them here as well.

So here’s what’s up:

1) Seller Contributions are going from 6% down to 3%.

a)     This is apparently being done to further help the consumer avoid added loan fees and inflated home prices. (I personally thought RESPA and HVCC were solving this)

2) Up Front Mortgage Insurance Premiums are being increased from 1.75% to 2.25%, and talks of the monthly mortgage insurance (currently .55%) going up as well

a)     Basically, it’s going to get a little bit more expensive for all borrowers regardless of credit score.

3) Down Payment of 10% on borrowers under a 580

a)     Now while FHA has implemented a minimum credit score of 580, that doesn’t really mean anything because all lenders these days are at least at a minimum score of a 620, so this rule won’t really affect you.

Now as for the timeframe in which these are going to be put into practice by lenders, it’s not certain yet, but I should be getting something soon, in which case, I’ll post an update on here.

If you really think about it, the only biggie here is the seller contributions. It just means that consumers are now going to need a little bit more cash available when buying homes to help cover closing costs.

Let the finger pointing begin…