Long-term mortgage rates inched up this week, according to surveys conducted by Freddie Mac and Bankrate.com.

In Freddie Mac’s survey, the rate on 30-year fixed mortgages grew to an average 6.46 percent from 6.45 percent a week ago, and the 15-year fixed rose to 6.15 percent from 6.12 percent. Points, which are fees lenders charge for loan processing expressed as a percent of the loan, averaged 0.5 on the 30- and 15-year loans.

Updating Kitchen Cabinets

We refaced our kitchen cabinets last year. We bought cabinet grade wood
at a lumber store, cut it to the sizes we needed for the cabinet doors
and stained it. It looked like a totally new kitchen! It cost a
fraction of the price of getting new cabinets since we were able to do the
work ourselves. Unless your kitchen has odd shaped doors, you should be
able to do this also. You can even get a router to make the pretty
designs in the doors if you want. We tried but decided we did not want to
invest that much time.
Vicki

More Loan Portfolios Brought to Market
The list of commercial mortgage and loan offerings keeps growing. DebtX has launched marketing for another $203 million of commercial mortgages and loans. That gives the Boston company some $500 million of loans that will be offered through Oct. 15. The portfolios are being brought to market amid a relative deluge of whole-loan offerings by a mix of conduit lenders, banking institutions and insurers. Despite the barrage of offerings most of the offerings will find buyers because of the variety of assets they represent. While debt-market troubles might be motivating some institutions to unload certain loans, most sellers are said to be banks that are making efforts to fine-tune their balance sheets.