End of a mortgage era

From the March issue: Fixed 30-year mortgage rates in the 5 percent range? Minimum down payments below 5 percent? Jumbo-size home loans for high-cost markets at regular interest rates? Kiss them good-bye — possibly sooner than you might guess. Take a snapshot of today’s mortgage market conditions and frame it. It’s highly likely you’ll never see anything like these favorable combinations of rates and terms again. That’s the inescapable conclusion emerging from the Obama administration’s “white paper” on optional remedies for the two ailing giants of housing finance — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — along with events already under way in the national economy. [more]