Weekly Rate & Market Update 5-19-17
Question of the week: What steps should I take to protect myself following the datahacks this past week?
Answer: This is tangentially mortgage and real estate related as one of the major companies that was hacked was DocuSign. For those not familiar DocuSign is the primary technology used in the mortgage, real estate and financial services industries for consumers to “sign” applications, offers and counter offers and account paperwork electronically.
DocuSign is on the record that no documents were accessed by the hackers, however email addresses were accessed. As a result many people who have used DocuSign have received malicious emails with subjects: “Completed: docusign.com –Wire Transfer Instructions for recipient-name Document Ready for Signature” or “Completed *company name* -Accounting Invoice *number* Document Ready for Signature”. The DocuSign logo is in the header and body creating an illusion email is from DocuSign, if you click the link and download the Word document malware will enter your computer and go to work accessing information.
When you are working with a company that uses DocuSign, or other electronic enabled signing, cloud or storage services, do not open any links unless you have confirmed with the sender they have sent you the link for action. Essentially if you receive a generic email that does not address you specifically do not open it. This sounds like common sense in this day and age, however many people using DocuSign and other services are doing so and are not familiar with the protocols and processes of the service or the company with whom they are working. So verify, verify, verify before opening links on services that are new to you, and if you are a long time user be suspicious of anything not normal to your prior experience.
At this point DocuSign says that only people with DocuSign accounts, myself and Stratis Financial for example, however my concern is that in a few days or weeks we learn that the hackers were able to go a level deeper and access participants emails as well—hence my cautionary communication to everyone.
The international hacking last week shut down hospitals, financial companies and other industries around the world last week. One benefit of situations like this is they raise our awareness to be prepared and be wary—just like a minor earthquake locally or a major one not far away has us repacking our earthquake kits and replacing the five year old canned food and kids’ shoes that are now three sizes too small.
I encourage everyone to click the links below and take some time for some computer and password maintenance. The first link is an article from CNET about 560 million passwords being exposed. A very good read to motivate you to spend some time cleaning up and changing passwords and user names and deleting old sites you no longer use.
The second link takes you to a site where you type in your email address and it will tell you if you have been breached and by scrolling down you can see what sites you many have been breached on. Think you are safe? One of the top 10 sites that has been breached in the past year is LinkedIn—do you have a LinkedIn account?
Click here for the CNET article.
Click here to see if your email has been used to breach passwords on a site you use.
Spend a few minutes and see if you have a potential issue or two—I did and discovered a few sites that I use and were hacked. I spent about ten to fifteen minutes going to my most frequently used sites, especially banking, financial, credit cards, and changed user names and passwords, easy-peasy.
Have a question? Ask me!
Words don’t have the power to hurt you. This is a fairly common saying, indicating that you choose if words will hurt you or not as they are just words. Well….this week words hurt a lot of people financially, and benefited some others. The war of words in Washington this week caused a big drop in equity markets—hurting investors, and a drop in Mortgage Backed Security (MBS) prices—assisting borrowers. There was no economic data or significant events, like an act of war or natural disaster, to cause the market moves, just words and speculation from politicians and members of the media. The net result was slightly favorable to mortgage rates as traditionally when stocks prices fall so do interest rates as investors flee the uncertainty of stocks for the certainty of bonds.
Rates for Friday May 19, 2017: The turmoil in Washington broke MBS prices out of their rut and we finish the week a bit lower than last Friday. Since the price change was not the result of data and events in the economy but rhetoric and politics I am not confident the lower rates will be long lasting and that we will float back up to the previous range.
FIXED RATE MORTGAGES AT COST OF 1.25 POINTS LOCKED FOR 45 DAYS:
30 year conforming 3.75% Down 0.125%
30 year high-balance conforming 3.875% Down 0.125%
30 year FHA 3.25% Flat
30 year FHA high-balance 3.75% Flat
Please note that these are base rates and adjustments may be added for condominiums, refinances, credit scores, loan to value, no impound account and period rate is locked. Rates are based on 20% down (3.5% for FHA) with 740 FICO score for purchase mortgages.
Hearing from agents in different markets that more inventory has been coming to market ahead of schools letting out for summer, and as a result a bit of a slow-down in offers being presented and multiple-offer situations. The information is anecdotal to these specific agents and what they are experiencing, however even with the small sample size it appears there could be an strong influx of new inventory on the market—meaning it is a great time to be in the market for your new home. Please call to go through your numbers and develop a strategy for you to purchase your new home!
Have a great week,
Dennis
