Lutherville, Md. (Map, News) - What can be made of today’s mortgage market?

There’s anxiety and uncertainty among lenders and investors, following American Home Mortgage Investment Corp.’s bankruptcy protection filing Monday and a surge in jumbo loan rates, said Drew Tignanelli, president of The Financial Consulate in Lutherville.

“We’re in a credit crunch right now, and you never know where it’s going to go until it’s over,” Tignanelli said.

A cold housing market and an increase in payment defaults have scared investors away from mortgage debt, causing American Home Mortgage’s financial backers get out of the mortgage game.

“As long as no borrowers went bankrupt, it was a great game,” Tignanelli said. “But now investors are realizing this is a lot riskier than they originally thought, and they’ve turned off the spigot.”

Jumbo mortgages exceed the $417,000 limit for loans eligible for purchase and guarantee by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored entities that provide funding for loans. Jumbo mortgages account for about 16 percent of the total mortgage market, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication.

Lenders charged an average of 7.34 percent for prime 30-year fixed-rate jumbo loans Monday, according to a survey by financial publisher HSH Associates. That was up from an average of about 7.1 percent last week and 6.5 percent in mid-May.

“That gives you a sense of how bad it is,” Tignanelli said. “It’s a dangerous market.”

Prospective homebuyers should “play it safe, sit back and hold on to their money for a little while,” Tignanelli said.

“What it comes back to is not understanding your own financial situation,” Thomas Shaner, executive director of the Maryland Association of Mortgage Brokers, said in a previous interview. “Ultimately, you are buying too much house for what you can afford.”

Information from The Associated Press was used in this article.

acannarsa@baltimoreexaminer.com

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