Rates for $417,000+ Homes Can Be Costly

An article written by NYTimes.com on August 12th tells us of how the subprime market is affecting higher priced homes.

When an investment banker set out to buy a $1.5 million home on Long Island last month, his mortgage broker quoted an interest rate of 8 percent. Three days later, when the buyer said he would take the loan, the mortgage banker had bad news: the new rate was 13 percent.

“I have been in the business 20 years and I have never seen” such a big swing in interest rates, said the broker, Bob Moulton, president of the Americana Mortgage Group in Manhasset, N.Y.

“There is a lot of fear in the markets,” he added. “When there is fear, people have a tendency to overreact.”

It seems that the market for jumbo mortgages has dried up.

Jumbo mortgages are most important in areas with high home prices, most notably on the East and West coasts. “In California, it has shut down the purchase market,” said Jeff Jaye, a mortgage broker in the Bay area. “It has shut down the refi market.”

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