A freep.com article points out mortgage money is still plentiful. Most mortgage products are unaffecteted by the problems in the subprime market. Take for example the 30 year fixed rate loans is in the low 6% range for people with pretty good credit. Larger loans (over $400,000) interest rates have even fallen this month. The article further explains the mortgage market has adverted a crisis since the products and underwriting that allowed people to buy houses they couldn't afford have disappeared. Plus underwriting standards have been overhauled and are stricter than they were a year ago.

A few years ago if you had credit card debt but owned a home it was always a good idea to get a home equity loan to pay off those credit cards. The interest rates are usually much lower and the interest is tax deductible. Fast forward to today and with the current US mortgage market problems you may find it hard to do this since some lenders have dropped home equity loans while others have tightened their lending standards. Since 2001 more than $350 billion in credit card debt has been moved to home equity loans or mortgages.


For more information, read the full article on USA Today. For some great home equity lenders please check out these reviews.

Rising mortgage rates will have an impact in housing as the growth has fallen from 29% in 2005-2006 to 26.6% in 2006-2007. There is a worry that housing will slow further, down to the 20% range over the next year. These rising rates has sparked a 60% drop in Real Estate sales.

For more information check out the article at livemint.com.

The Dow average dropped as much as 203 points a day after closing above 14,000 for the first time, driven by record takeovers and 19 straight quarters of U.S. profit growth above 10 percent. Concern that defaults by borrowers with limited or poor credit histories will reduce banks' earnings pushed down 89 of 92 financial firms in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

More of this article at Bloomberg.com.

I noticed this article on Reuters.

It looks like the U.S. House of Representatives Democrats want to slash subsidies paid to college student-loan companies such as Sallie Mae, Citigroup and Bank of America. The student-loan industry is worth over $85 billion and if this bill was adopted some industry experts said that it would squeeze profits and push the smaller loan companies out of providing education loans.

According to a White House statement, they said the bill "fails to target aid to the neediest students currently in college and creates new mandatory federal programs and policies that are poorly designed and would have significant long-term costs.".

Three years earlier, Georgia lawmakers handed the high-interest lenders (Cash Advance, PayDay) one of their worst defeats ever by passing a bill that shut down every payday lending outfit in the state.

The loan industry suffered millions in losses. The nation's largest payday lending chain, Advance America, shut down 89 Georgia stores after passage of the 2004 law. Those outlets produced net revenues of $19.9 million in 2003, according to the company's public filings.

Battered by the Georgia law and damaging regulatory decisions elsewhere, the payday lending industry has given itself a makeover to present a more consumer-friendly face. In February, it kicked off a $10 million public education campaign.

Whether the industry has shed its predatory image was tested last March at the General Assembly, where the House looked at a bill to legalize payday lending.

The main advantage with Payday Lending is it is cheaper to do than having overdraft charges applied to your account at most banks but Georgia officials see Payday companies more as loan sharks than saving people money.

We have just added a new forum to Loan Sites Reviews. You can post messages about anything loan related. As the forum becomes busier, we will review what type of message topics are popular. We may then reorganize the forum categories to better suit the loan topics being discussed.

Look under Resources on the right for the forum.

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More information about ING Direct, their Savings Accounts and Mortgages can be foun in our review.