By the numbers: Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates declined this week, approaching historically low levels with the spring home-buying season underway. Mortgage giant Freddie Mac says the national average for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage slipped to 3.66% from 3.70% last week. The average rate for a 15-year mortgage, popular with homeowners who refinance, fell to 2.93% from 2.98% last week. A year ago, the average 30-year mortgage rate was 4.34% and the 15-year rate was 3.38%. As The Associated Press reports, mortgage rates have remained low even though the Federal Reserve in October ended its monthly bond purchases, designed to hold down long-term rates. The Fed signaled recently that it’s still not ready to start raising short-term rates after keeping them near zero for over six years.
On file: Battered by a scandal over delays in approving groups for tax-exempt status and plagued by a backlog tens of thousands of cases long, the Internal Revenue Service unveiled a strikingly stripped-down online application last year to speed the process. But The New York Times reports that to critics, the IRS version of “don’t ask, don’t tell” is fraught with problems. An unlikely coalition of tax lawyers, state enforcement agents and even many nonprofits that favor simpler rules say that the agency—by not asking any questions about governance, conflicts of interest or function, and saying applicants don’t have to reveal any such issues—is making it too easy to commit fraud on the 1023-EZ form. Read the full story.
On the bench: At a time when the U.S. stock market is still flirting with record highs, more than half of Americans are standing on the sidelines. As USA Today reports, a Bankrate.com survey released this morning found that 52% of those polled said they weren’t currently investing in the stock market. “It was a little surprising, especially since we specified that also includes IRAs and 401(k)s,” says Claes Bell, banking analyst for the personal finance website. Among those not currently putting money into stocks, 53% said the reason was they simply didn’t have the spare cash to do so. Seniors were more likely than their younger peers to say they didn’t have the money to invest. Read the full story.
