Trump’s European Travel Ban Shakes Global Stock Markets: Live Updates

The rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has dropped to about 3.74 percent and the Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday that refinancing applications jumped 79 percent last week.

The index that tracks refinancing activity surged to its highest level since 2009, the worst of the financial crisis, and there has been an almost equally robust rise in applications for new mortgages.

If interest rates remain low, the association said it expected refinancing activity to exceed last year’s levels by 37 percent.

The best refinancing deals may not be the ones found on lender websites or so-called mortgage lead generation websites run by firms like Bankrate, Lendingtree and Zillow.

“Very seldom does a borrower get the rate advertised on an aggregator website,” said Rick Sharga, founder of mortgage and real estate consulting firm CJ Patrick. “What we are hearing is some firms are pricing themselves out of the market to slow down the flow of leads, especially to people who are just rate shopping.”

Even the website for Wells Fargo listed the going rate for a refinancing on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 4.25 percent — well above the rate cited by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Walter Schmidt, a manager with the mortgages strategy group at FHN Financial, said posted rates were probably higher than in reality, and he had heard good customers were getting better rates by dealing directly with the banks that underwrote their existing mortgages.

Here’s what else is happening.

• The actor Tom Hanks said on Wednesday that he and his wife, Rita Wilson, learned they had the coronavirus. The 63-year-old Academy Award-winning actor is in Australia, where he was set to film a movie about the life of Elvis Presley.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/business/stock-market-today.html