30-year mortgage rate rises to 4.14%
WASHINGTON -- Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates rose slightly this week but remained near their lows for the year.
Mortgage company Freddie Mac said the nationwide average for a 30-year loan increased to 4.14 percent from 4.12 percent last week. The average for the 15-year mortgage, a popular choice for people who are refinancing, rose to 3.27 percent from 3.23 percent last week.
Mortgage rates are below the levels of a year ago. They have fallen in recent weeks after climbing last summer when the Federal Reserve began talking about reducing the monthly bond purchases it was making to keep long-term borrowing rates low.
To calculate average mortgage rates, Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., surveys lenders across the country between Monday and Wednesday each week. The average doesn't include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.
The average fee for a 30-year mortgage was 0.7 point, up from 0.6 point last week. The fee for a 15-year mortgage declined to 0.6 point from 0.7 point last week.
-- The Associated Press
90-day mortgage delinquencies fall 1.1%
The share of U.S. mortgages that are seriously delinquent fell to the lowest in six years as the job market improved, allowing borrowers to stay current on payments while higher home prices made it easier for others to sell.
Mortgages that were more than 90 days behind or in the foreclosure process dropped to 4.8 percent of loans in the second quarter from 5.9 percent a year earlier, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a report Thursday. That was the lowest rate since the second quarter of 2008, when it was 4.5 percent.
The foreclosure crisis is fading in much of the country as the economy rebounds. Employers in the U.S. added more than 200,000 workers for the sixth straight month in July and the unemployment rate rose to 6.2 percent as growing confidence prompted more Americans to look for work, Labor Department figures show.
"We're well into resolution," said Michael Fratantoni, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association. "The stronger job market means fewer people are going delinquent at the beginning of the process. The stronger housing market means if someone becomes delinquent, they're able to sell the home before late-stage delinquency or the loan goes in the foreclosure process."
About 75 percent of seriously delinquent loans were originated in 2007 and earlier.
-- Bloomberg News
Statoil comes up dry at Arctic drilling
STOCKHOLM -- Norway's Statoil ASA said it found no commercial quantities of oil and gas at the northernmost wells it has ever drilled in the Arctic.
The government-controlled company drilled three exploration wells this summer in the Hoop area of the Barents Sea.
Two of them were the northernmost wells ever drilled on the Norwegian continental shelf, more than 185 miles north of the mainland.
Statoil said Thursday this year's exploration campaign ended without any commercial discoveries. It didn't say whether drilling would resume next year, only that "exploring for hydrocarbons in the Barents Sea takes time and stamina."
Statoil is pushing into Arctic waters amid declining offshore production in the North Sea, prompting protests from environmentalists who fear an oil spill in the area could have disastrous consequences.
-- The Associated Press
China curtails news on instant messages
BEIJING -- China's government tightened control over popular instant messaging services Thursday after telling South Korea that access to some foreign services was blocked because they were used to exchange terrorism-related information.
The government announced that only established media companies will be allowed to release political and social news. That would curtail a growing trend in use of instant messaging services by journalists and scholars to distribute independent news reports and commentary.
The ruling Communist Party has repeatedly tightened controls over microblogs and other social media that give Chinese a rare platform to express themselves to a large audience in a country where all traditional media are state-owned.
Meanwhile, China has informed South Korea it has blocked access to Kakao Talk and Line, two mobile messaging services, which it said were used to exchange terrorism-related information, according to a South Korean official who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak on the matter.
China is on edge about security following a series of deadly attacks communist authorities blame on Islamic radicals it says want independence for the country's northwestern region of Xinjiang.
-- The Associated Press
Crude oil gush spurs new investments
HOUSTON -- The gusher of crude from the Permian Basin has spurred new investments from refinery and pipeline companies trying to take advantage of low prices caused by rising supplies.
Delek US Holdings expects to expand its refinery in Tyler, Texas, by 25 percent in early 2015, and Sunoco Logistics Partners asked shippers if they wanted to commit to a new pipeline to carry West Texas oil across the state and into southern Louisiana.
The projects underscore the continued influence of the shale boom on the U.S. energy landscape more than five years after hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling helped reverse a decades-long decline in oil production.
"There's like a wall of crude oil coming out of the Permian," said David Hackett, president of Stillwater Associates, an Irvine, Calif.-based energy consulting firm. "The first projects look like they're all filled up; now the next wave is getting announced."
The Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico is the nation's largest oil field. It's expected to produce 1.63 million barrels a day of oil in August, up 86 percent from August 2008. The rapid increase has caused prices in the Permian hub of Midland, Texas, to slump to $11.50 a barrel below the U.S. benchmark in Cushing, Okla., from a discount of 35 cents a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
-- Bloomberg News
Business on 08/08/2014