Lanes Appraisals

10/30/2025

It's been a long time since I last posted here, and I think it's time to get back to it....

As of 8:00 AM this morning, the 30-year average 30-year Conventional fixed rate, according to Mortgage News Daily, was around 6.15%. This was, more or less, the lowest rate we have seen in a year, as they continued the downward trend we have seen over the past 90 days. By 5:00 pm this afternoon, we were closer to 6.30% for the same 30-year Conventional fixed rate. This is confusing to most market participants, given that the Federal Reserve actually cut rates today. This leaves most people in the market confused and wondering, What gives? After all, how do rates get cut by the Fed, and the lending rates actually go up by a fair amount?

First, you have to understand that the Fed rate (set by the Federal Reserve) has very little to do with mortgage lending rates. The Fed Rate is a reference to the overnight lending rate that the Federal Reserve Bank charges to banks for overnight loans. The mortgage rates for loans are more directly controlled by the 10 Year Treasury Bond Rates, and not the Fed Rate. 10-Year. It is more accurate to say that an inverse relationship exists between the Fed Rate and mortgage rates, especially at this time. The reasons are kinda confusing for most people outside the Financial world of lending, but this video does a great job of explaining how this works..

In this video, we'll be discussing how bond yields affect mortgage rates. When bond yields go up, it makes it more expensive for banks to borrow money, which...

07/02/2024

It used to be that when obtaining a mortgage for a HUD-backed loan (FHA, VA, USDA); the home had to comply with a long list of government requirements on the house's condition; and obtaining a conventional loan, it was understood that the home did not have to be in a literal perfect condition. Those days are long gone. The government via regulators; has essentially done away with the differences and now even for a conditional loan, the home still has to be nearly perfect. Have a slight bit of minor dampness in the basement, and boom...required foundation inspections are the order of the day. Have a garage with OSB or partial board walls inside, and a small possible indication of a prior water leak is noted...boom, structural, and roof inspections are required. Have the typical foundation cracks that always occur as concrete dries...no longer is that understood, so....boom..structural inspections are required. Who does this benefit? 90% of the time the only benefit is entirely on the person who is paid to do the required inspections. The borrower and the lender are definitely not benefiting because now they have to get these inspections done, which cost several hundred dollars each, not to mention 2-3 weeks of delayed closings. It is government overreach and lack of common sense on clear display....it's maddening. But, it is the reality of getting a mortgage today. This is a bad policy, because it forces the public to spend money they do not have, or in some cases prohibits the average person from being able to get a loan on the home, which results in only cash buyers being able to buy the home....which benefits the investors at the detriment of the average citizen.

05/03/2024

Throughout much of the country property owners are seeing a dramatic rise in Homeowners Insurance Premiums. This is in line with an increase in cost in nearly every area of the economy from food to energy, to home prices. Combine these increases in Inflation with rising Interest Rates and Insurance costs and one has to wonder, at what point does the Real Estate market begin to react to the dramatically rising cost of owning a home? No doubt the Real Estate market has seen a dramatic increase since 2019, but with ever-rising costs and household incomes not keeping pace with even a fraction of these increases, the market is facing significant headwinds. Combine this with increasingly restrictive lending standards, less money available in the banks for lending, and budgets stretched beyond any ability to sustain ever-mounting costs and the result is obvious and inevitable. The real question is, when does the Real Estate market begin to see a decline in home values? The article below demonstrates the rising Insurance cost, on the low end around 5% a year, to well over 35% in some states.

Home insurance costs have been rising throughout the country over the past couple of years. Here's how much they went up in each state.

04/09/2024

Quote from a Banking industry newsletter today, "“Fed speak” lately has been hawkish, and the sentiment for rate cuts seems to be fading fast. Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari last week raised the possibility of rate hikes if inflation doesn't continue to work its way lower, while Fed Governor Bowman declaring that progress on inflation "has stalled,” and Dallas president Logan added to the malaise when she declared it "much too soon" to think about rate cuts."

The fact that this is 1- Newsworthy as if everyone involved in the Banking Industry didn't already know this....is more than a little scary. Talk about burying your head in the sand and refusing to acknowledge reality! Of course, no meaningful lowering of the Fed Rate was coming. 2 - The Fed has made it clear to anyone watching, that the only three concerns they have at this time are fighting inflation (which isn't getting better...at all), that they do all they can to collapse the economy (the reasons for which are too detailed and lengthy to get into on FB at this time), and to collapse the Dollar as the standard for most of the world's economy and bring in a worldwide central banking system/standard of currency. If you doubt that, you are new to how this economic system works.

03/16/2024

Appraisers are required to analyze and describe the neighborhood in which the property we are Appraising is located. This is standard on all forms we use, which are developed by the government (more or less, we won't split hairs on this point at this time). With the recent push to label all Appraisers as racist Grand Wizards of the K*K that need to be burned at the stake, we have fallen on strange times. In society, we all know of words that are banned. However, for Appraisers, this has been taken to an entirely new level of absurdity. For instance, the following two sentences are no longer permitted by the Government, to be in our reports. Can you spot the issue?

1- The subject is located within a reasonable proximity to the area's community services such as schooling, police, fire, and rescue.

2 - Amenities such as shopping, restaurants, and parks are located within an acceptable distance of the subject.

Yes, these two sentences will get your report "Rejected", and sent back to the Appraiser for "Correcting" by the gate-keeping AI software that they use to process and review each report.

So, can you spot the racism that is dripping from each sentence?

03/08/2024

With so much inflation these days, this is about right.

02/24/2024

As Inflation continues to wreak havoc on our economy, I find this graph particularly troubling.

12/08/2023

So the government (FHFA) thought, and still thinks, it is a great idea to remove appraisers from many mortgage loans. However, as the article below demonstrates, this option has been abused. The people performing "Inspections" are often the most uneducated, least knowledgeable people possible. This is a disaster in the making, and the government refuses to admit they made a very short-sighted mistake.