Average residential mortgage rates declined to a near-record low, driven mainly by refinancing activity, according to survey data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. For the week ended March 6, mortgage applications were up about 11.6 percent from the previous week and up 5.7 percent from the same week a year ago. Refinancing accounted for 67.9 percent of all applications. Based on an 80 percent loan-to-value, the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage dropped to 4.96 percent from 5.14 percent, while points increased to 1.16 from 1.05 for the week.

Have a fixed-rate mortgage at 4.5 per cent or higher? Then you should be refinancing, says Steve Moffitt, senior mortgage consultant with Equimac Mortgage Centre in Vancouver. “There’s never been a better opportunity historically, never, for doing a refinancing, ” he adds.
If only it were that simple. In fact, determining whether you should refinance or not depends largely on the penalty you will pay to get out of your current mortgage, and the amount of money you could save with a new one.

As homeowners try to refinance their mortgages at lower rates, their home equity lenders are telling them, “Not so fast.” Home equity lenders are throwing roadblocks in front of their clients who want to refinance their primary mortgages. In some cases, they delay refinances for a month or more. In other cases, they block homeowners from refinancing altogether — all because of something called “resubordination.” “It can completely blow a refi out of the water,” says Christopher Cruise, senior loan officer for GOTeHomeLoans.com in Bethesda, Md.

Rising unemployment is delivering another blow to the depressed U.S. housing market. After months of declines in the number of foreclosures despite rising mortgage defaults, with a barricade of state and lender moratoriums preventing repossessions, foreclosures rose 6% in February from the month before, with 209,631 filings in all, according to Irvine, Calif.-based data firm RealtyTrac. Compared to the corresponding month a year ago, foreclosures were up 30%.