Escrow Holdback Season Starts Now

We’ve had a stunning run here in the last 2 weeks with conforming 30 year fixed rates holding steady at around 4.75%. Now that the fist quarter is in the books we’ve got “earnings season”! This means that all the big public companies are going to tell their shareholders how much they made or lost. So far the news has been kind of mixed, but compared to the end of Q4 2008, this is a big change. I’ve been writing about the change in ‘mark to market’ accounting rules, and the relaxation of this practice is allowing banks to show big profits (on paper). The story there is that these banks have pretty much been profitable all along, its just that on paper they had huge depressions in some of their holdings. Now they don’t have to calculate that into the picture. The encouraging news is bringing money out of the bond market and into the stock market…. The net effect of this is mortgage rates edging higher. I’m looking to lock in most of my clients as soon as possible.