The Monthly Skim….

The jobless report that came back in late July was slightly lower at $301,000 below the expected $310,000 and that mixed with Ben Bernanke’s statement that inflation was leveling off helped push the bond market down slightly, which in turn brought the mortgage rates up. In the middle of May until the beginning of June we saw some of the largest rate increases we had seen in 3 years. The bond took a very large drop in a 24 hour period, plummeting 94 points sending rates up quite a bit. The 30 year rates are still attractive at 6.5% - 6.75% and that should stay steady for a while now.

Many celebrated on the 19th of July as the Dow Jones hit a record high going slightly over 14,000. The stock market making its rally back tends to pull some investors out of the bond market and weigh heavier into the stock market. This too will bring rates up slightly. There has not been any more talk about the prime interest rate taking any more hikes for quite some time, in fact there has been talk about it possibly going lower…we’ll have to wait and see what happens there.

We have been seeing the woe’s at the pump with gasoline above $3/gallon and oil prices hanging in high at $75+. Gold is still above $670 an ounce and holding.

There has been quite a bit of real estate activity in our area in the last 30 days which is a good sign for our area. Some of the lakes area homes have seen a slight decline in traffic, but values should hold. Some investors that bought up lake property 2 years ago and bought on the upswing, may have to wait it out for a while to capitalize on their investment.

It has been a pretty good year so far, we’ll keep an eye on some of the economists overall outlook on where our dollar will take us

Donovan Schumacher is president and owner of Valesco Mortgage. Schumacher Can be reached at dschumacher@valescomortgage.com or by calling