Check out current rates here: http://www.texaslending.com/mortgage-rates.htm

All conventional rates and APRs assume 80% financing on a $165,000 loan value with max loan of $417,000. Jumbo rate/APR minimum $417,000 loan amount and 70% financing. Offers may terminate at any time without notice. Rate/APR calculated on a 365 day year with typical closing costs. Rates/APRs subject to change in closing costs and properties. All rates as of date posted on this website with 40 day lock period. Signed loan application required to lock rate. Rates may be higher for credit scores below 740 middle score. APR will change with loan amount and percentage of home being financed.

* All rates quoted with 1% origination
*Based on loan amounts of $165,000+
*Subject to credit & income requirements
*restrictions apply
NMLS# 137773

With mortgage rates at the lowest levels since, well since the Earth’s been around, you may wonder if this is the right time to buy that dream home or refinance your current mortgage. Here we will address some common misconceptions that may be holding you back, before you miss out on the best rates in about four billion years.

Misconception #1: “The housing market is too scary.”

There’s nothing really to be afraid about right now. The mortgage market is pretty much like it was back in about 1994. Rates are lower but basic qualification requirements are the same. These days the background checking is more cumbersome but how we manage that is different for us, not for the consumer.

Right now you’re looking at about a 3.375% rate on your 30-year fixed mortgage if you have a loan sized between $175,000 and $417,000, with 20% equity and a 740 credit score.  This assumes you will pay a 1% origination fee. With these rates and APRs below 3.6%, the longer you wait, the more you risk these rates being out of the market.

It may also be time to refinance your home loan. As a matter of fact, if you’re above 4% on your current loan, you might consider a 15-year mortgage. APRs are below 2.85% for those same loan sizes, equity and credit scores. With your payment rate at 2.5% and your APR below 2.85% you have a great opportunity to refinance now.

Misconception #2: “I have to put down 20% to buy a house.”

You can read a lot of articles, by people who don’t have a license to discuss mortgages that tell you it takes 20% down to buy a home. It absolutely does not. If you are getting a conventional loan and have a credit score above 660, 95% financing is possible for many people with APRs below 4%.   Other conditions apply so call us to check on your options.

Misconception #3: “It is not possible to get a zero-down mortgage loan anymore.”

There are two great programs that have a zero down payment. The VA loan is the best one out there. It has 100% financing and the VA finances your funding fee, which varies based on circumstances. There is also no mortgage insurance. You may have to pay some closing costs but it is possible to have a zero down payment.  APRs on VA purchase loans are below 4% for most loans but may be higher in some circumstances.

The USDA loan is similar but has changed slightly this last year. Actually, it is a 102% loan, including a fee similar to a VA funding fee. There is mortgage insurance, although it is very low.

You get awesome rates for these loans, with VA and USDA loans.  The APRs will vary but may currently be found below 4% on many loans with some situations above 4% APR.  Call for details regarding your personal situation so you can find your best option.

Our job at TexasLending.com is to help clear up the misconceptions in the loan process. We let you know exactly what to do before you have to do it, giving you advice and options. Call us today and you can speak with an experienced loan officer in as little as nine seconds.

This, of course, is generally good news for the broader economy. According to Bloomberg:

Further price gains may help alleviate a lack of housing inventory by encouraging more homeowners to put their properties on the market. At the same time, mortgage rates close to all- time lows and an improving labor market are providing a boost for residential real estate, which is a source of strength for the expansion.

“Rising home prices are good for the economy,” Harm Bandholz, chief U.S. economist at UniCredit Group in New York, said before the report. “This affects a good part of the U.S. population, allowing them to borrow against their houses and enabling some who have been underwater to refinance. That’s very important.”

However, in the past couple decades, we’ve seen no shortage of overly-optimistic housing forecasts. And since the housing market collapsed from 2006 to 2008, we’ve seen several “false recoveries,” where prices surged temporarily before returning to a much more tepid pattern of growth. So to avoid getting sucked into the hype, let’s take a look at a few reasons why we shouldn’t be too optimistic about the Texas housing market — whether in Dallas, Houston, Austin or beyond.

1. We’re still not back to where we were when the crisis began.

Despite the recent gains, average nationwide home prices are still not even back to where they were when this whole crisis began in 2008, and they’re still roughly 30 percent lower than they were at the height of the bubble in 2006. So, in other words, the past five years have essentially been lost. The picture isn’t as bad in Texas — since the bubble was smaller here, prices have been able to recover almost fully. But even here in the Lone Star State, the past few years might as well have never happened from a housing market perspective.

2. Short-term gains sometimes fail to lead to long-term health.

Simply put, the future remains cloudy, and the recent gains are only a small step in a long road ahead — a road that we still don’t know whether will go up or down. In fact, Robert Shiller (yep — the Shiller from the Case-Shiller Index) himself poured a little cold water on the housing hype recently in the New York Times:

We do know one thing from economic research: one-year home price increases, after correcting for inflation, have had almost no statistical relationship to increases 10 years down the road. Thus, the upturn last year is irrelevant to long-run forecasting. Booms are typically followed by busts, usually in far less than 10 years. In a decade, an entire housing boom, if there is one in inflation-corrected terms, is likely to have been reversed and completely washed away.

3. Economic Issues Remain

Those dark economic clouds on the horizon still aren’t going away. Whether its tax and regulation issues coming from Washington, Washington’s inability to deal with problems such as debt, or other issues, things could collapse in a big way again. Still, this summer should be as good as a housing environment as we’ve seen in some time. And TexasLending.com is here to help with a range of Austin home loans, Houston home loans and Dallas home loans.

Check out current rates here: http://www.texaslending.com/mortgage-rates.htm

All conventional rates and APRs assume 80% financing on a $165,000 loan value with max loan of $417,000. Jumbo rate/APR minimum $417,000 loan amount and 70% financing. Offers may terminate at any time without notice. Rate/APR calculated on a 365 day year with typical closing costs. Rates/APRs subject to change in closing costs and properties. All rates as of date posted on this website with 40 day lock period. Signed loan application required to lock rate. Rates may be higher for credit scores below 740 middle score. APR will change with loan amount and percentage of home being financed.

* All rates quoted with 1% origination
*Based on loan amounts of $165,000+
*Subject to credit & income requirements
*restrictions apply
NMLS# 137773

Check out current rates here: http://www.texaslending.com/mortgage-rates.htm

All conventional rates and APRs assume 80% financing on a $165,000 loan value with max loan of $417,000. Jumbo rate/APR minimum $417,000 loan amount and 70% financing. Offers may terminate at any time without notice. Rate/APR calculated on a 365 day year with typical closing costs. Rates/APRs subject to change in closing costs and properties. All rates as of date posted on this website with 40 day lock period. Signed loan application required to lock rate. Rates may be higher for credit scores below 740 middle score. APR will change with loan amount and percentage of home being financed.

* All rates quoted with 1% origination
*Based on loan amounts of $165,000+
*Subject to credit & income requirements
*restrictions apply
NMLS# 137773

Check out current rates here: http://www.texaslending.com/mortgage-rates.htm

All conventional rates and APRs assume 80% financing on a $165,000 loan value with max loan of $417,000. Jumbo rate/APR minimum $417,000 loan amount and 70% financing. Offers may terminate at any time without notice. Rate/APR calculated on a 365 day year with typical closing costs. Rates/APRs subject to change in closing costs and properties. All rates as of date posted on this website with 40 day lock period. Signed loan application required to lock rate. Rates may be higher for credit scores below 740 middle score. APR will change with loan amount and percentage of home being financed.

* All rates quoted with 1% origination
*Based on loan amounts of $165,000+
*Subject to credit & income requirements
*restrictions apply
NMLS# 137773

That’s not because the Dallas-Ft. Worth housing market is in worse overall shape. Instead, it’s more likely because home prices in Dallas-Ft. Worth never crashed as hard as those in many cities did during the Great Recession, leaving there somewhat less room for a massive rebound.

According to The Dallas Morning News, many housing experts believe that this persistent dynamic is largely a sign of good health:

“I know everybody wants to be first, but you guys have been first in a better way,” David Blitzer, chairman of S&P’s index committee, said Tuesday. “In the last 10 years, when most of the country was going berserk with housing, you guys managed to keep your heads on your shoulders,” he said. He said the rebound in home values in North Texas is understandably more modest than in cities where prices collapsed. Moderation is a good thing, Blitzer said.

During the early and mid-2000s, when home prices in many coastal and Southwestern cities exploded by double-digit annual increases, price gains in Dallas and other Texas cities were much smaller. North Texas wasn’t one of the “bubble” markets with inflated residential values when the housing market crashed starting in 2006. So prices here fell a lot less than in other U.S. cities.

[...] “The Dallas increase reflects a far more stable, sustainable rate of increase rather than the high volatility of boom-bust,” said James Gaines, an economist with the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.

To further illustrate this point, despite the recent rapid growth, prices are still down nationwide roughly 30 percent from mid-2006, according to the Case-Shiller index. That number is much worse in some of the hardest-hit bubble cities. But in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, most homes have regained nearly all of the value they lost when the bubble popped (that also means they are still a long ways from where they would’ve been had the market never collapsed in the first place, but it’s still a good indicator of the relative health of North Texas housing). Housing markets in Houston, Austin and San Antonio are in similar shape.

Housing experts don’t expect the nationwide growth rates to continue for the foreseeable future, and fears of another bubble have been rising in cities especially prone to severe boom/bust cycles such as San Francisco and Miami. Texas cities, where housing is generally more abundant and affordable, are somewhat less prone to this.

So that’s the landscape heading into the summer home-buying season. If it looks like a good time to buy for your family, TexasLending.com is here to help with a extensive variety of Texas home loan options, including Houston home refinance loans, Dallas home equity loans and Austin home purchase loans.

Check out current rates here: http://www.texaslending.com/mortgage-rates.htm

All conventional rates and APRs assume 80% financing on a $165,000 loan value with max loan of $417,000. Jumbo rate/APR minimum $417,000 loan amount and 70% financing. Offers may terminate at any time without notice. Rate/APR calculated on a 365 day year with typical closing costs. Rates/APRs subject to change in closing costs and properties. All rates as of date posted on this website with 40 day lock period. Signed loan application required to lock rate. Rates may be higher for credit scores below 740 middle score. APR will change with loan amount and percentage of home being financed.

* All rates quoted with 1% origination
*Based on loan amounts of $165,000+
*Subject to credit & income requirements
*restrictions apply
NMLS# 137773

The statistics now appear to back this up. Population growth is determined by a number of factors, including several obvious ones such as the total number of births or deaths in a state, as well as how many immigrants arrive from other states (this will make a bigger difference, of course, in border states than those farther inland, and historically it’s what made New York and California so populous). But there’s another factor that is perhaps the most most indicative of a state’s overall health and desirability: net domestic migration. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, net domestic migration is defined as the overall gain or loss of population among people moving to or from other states.

The Texas A&M Real Estate Center describes the effect this way:

“Net domestic migration” is a handsome phrase. It’s got a real ring to it, like “warm southern breeze” or “mom’s meatloaf.” Business owners love it. States love it. Cities do, too. It’s great for real estate owners as well.[...]

All four of these components have important social implications, but I view net domestic migration as a key barometer of the economic viability of a city or a state. In my opinion, states that have positive net domestic migration are states that are creating jobs and have a brighter outlook for economic growth. These are areas that more people move into than out of.

According to his research, Texas led the way in domestic migration in 2012, with a net gain of 140,888 people moving in from other states. Florida came in second with a gain of 101,411 new residents, followed by a big drop-off to the other gainers: Arizona (34,456), Colorado (27,962), Georgia (19,928) and Nevada (13,918).

By comparison, states with negative net domestic migration — if more families are leaving your state than those that are arriving — it’s probably an indication that something might be wrong — often high taxes, high cost of living or lack of employment. Last year’s biggest net losers were New York (-115,754), Illinois (-73,453) and California (-44,541) — all states with expensive housing markets and relatively high taxes. (You can access more of these sorts of statistics here.)

Long story short, Texas is clearly a great place to call home. And TexasLending.com is here to welcome you with a vast array of Austin home loans, Houston home loans and Dallas home loans. Contact us to learn more.

Check out current rates here: http://www.texaslending.com/mortgage-rates.htm

All conventional rates and APRs assume 80% financing on a $165,000 loan value with max loan of $417,000. Jumbo rate/APR minimum $417,000 loan amount and 70% financing. Offers may terminate at any time without notice. Rate/APR calculated on a 365 day year with typical closing costs. Rates/APRs subject to change in closing costs and properties. All rates as of date posted on this website with 40 day lock period. Signed loan application required to lock rate. Rates may be higher for credit scores below 740 middle score. APR will change with loan amount and percentage of home being financed.

* All rates quoted with 1% origination
*Based on loan amounts of $165,000+
*Subject to credit & income requirements
*restrictions apply
NMLS# 137773