Mortgage rates at historic lows, but qualifying now takes a lot more than it did. There is no loan market for home buyers like there used to be, you get one option, the government. Reform let the big guys walk free and stuck it to the little guys. Nice work Obama.

That couldn't possibly be because there were 20% fewer business days, could it?

"Down but never out, baby! The American Dream will rith agin, an' lay a slobberknocker upside your haid! I'll give you such a clubberin', yo belly-welly will feel it for dayth!"

As someone in the market looking for a house, it couldn't possibly be because everyone was on vacation for the 4th of July? For the last two weeks, there were hardly any open houses scheduled and very very few new properties listed for sale.

This week, there's more new listings and more open houses now that people aren't spending all day drinking and shooting off fireworks in glee.

We can haz Hope and Change now?

Generation_D: Mortgage rates at historic lows, but qualifying now takes a lot more than it did. There is no loan market for home buyers like there used to be, you get one option, the government. Reform let the big guys walk free and stuck it to the little guys. Nice work Obama.

It's like they took a basic finance course and heard about this crazy thing called "The Five C's of Credit".

Maybe this tab should just redirect to the MarketWatch homepage?

Maybe we should wake up from the"American Dream" to the "Anerican Reality." We've paved over our prime farm land to create thousand of miles of asphalt, lined with particle board boxes, where it's impossible to live without depending on a fossil fueled wagon, simply to get you to the store to buy produce grown hundreds if not thousands of miles away.

Generation_D: Mortgage rates at historic lows, but qualifying now takes a lot more than it did. There is no loan market for home buyers like there used to be, you get one option, the government. Reform let the big guys walk free and stuck it to the little guys. Nice work Obama.

Nice troll. We just closed on a new 30-year loan at 3.75%. We both have stellar credit and stable income. It was hell to get the loan not because of Obama, but one lazy underwriter trying to scare everyone away until he loses the penalty points earned from all the failed crappy loans he approved just to make a quick buck.

Lazy/greedy businesses are the root of most of our problems.

Lost Thought 00: That couldn't possibly be because there were 20% fewer business days, could it?

More, if you consider the day before and after. And to be honest, that weekend is going to be soft. As mentioned, Realtors aren't going to have open houses and spend their time and resources on something only a few people are going to attend. Better to use that disrupted week to catch up on past paperwork.