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If you want the cheapest mortgage rate, you must meet certain underwriting standards from mortgage giants Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. For example, you must prove your stable income with W2s, tax returns and the like. You must also show your total house payment plus certain monthly recurring debts don’t exceed a certain percentage of your gross income (before taxes). Fannie and Freddie don’t make mortgages. Rather, they purchase closed loans from mortgage lenders. Because of the explicit U.S. government guarantee, they can offer the cheapest money. If you don’t fit the F&F conventional box, there is an alternative, exotic…

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a pair of lawsuits against Southern California Edison seeking at least $77 million in damages and accusing the company of negligence in relation to this year’s Eaton fire and the Fairview fire of 2022, authorities said Thursday, Sept. 4. The government is seeking more than $40 million in damages for the Eaton fire, and $37 million in damages for the Fairview fire. Those funds are what the U.S. estimated it spent on fighting those blazes. “The lawsuits filed today allege a troubling pattern of negligence resulting in death, destruction, and tens of millions…

By Anna Claire Vollers, Stateline.org Republican support for in vitro fertilization, after surging in the wake of a 2024 Alabama Supreme Court decision that threatened the procedure, may be splintering as President Donald Trump retreats from his IVF promises and more far-right voices gain ground. Earlier this year, conservatives in the Tennessee House staged an eleventh-hour skirmish over an IVF protection bill introduced by two of their Republican colleagues. The bill eventually passed, becoming one of the first in the nation to explicitly protect access to IVF. But some lawmakers who voted for it have signaled their willingness to revisit…

CHARGERS (11-6 last season) vs. CHIEFS (15-2 last season) When: Friday, 5 p.m. Where: Corinthians Arena, Sao Paulo, Brazil TV/Radio: Ch. 4/YouTube; 640 AM/94.3 FM (Spanish) Line: Chiefs by 3 Notable injury designations: Chargers: None. Chiefs: OUT: WR Jalen Royals (knee). QUESTIONABLE: DL Omarr Norman-Lott (ankle). What’s at stake: The Chargers have lost seven consecutive to the Chiefs, including six by one score. Each team is coming off a humbling conclusion to its 2024 season. The Chargers were beaten by the Houston Texans in an AFC wild-card game and the Chiefs were routed by the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super…

By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer The average rate on a 30-year U.S. mortgage fell again this week, extending a recent trend that should give prospective homebuyers more purchasing power. The long-term rate eased to 6.5% from 6.56% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 6.35%. Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also fell. The average rate slipped to 5.6% from 5.69% last week. A year ago, it was 5.47%, Freddie Mac said. Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions to bond…

By KEN SWEET, AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Americans would save roughly $100 billion a year in interest costs if President Donald Trump’s campaign proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10% were implemented, according to a paper published by Vanderbilt University on Thursday. Further, the banks and credit card companies would be able to withstand, and even still be profitable, if there were to be a national cap on interest rates. While limited in scope, the paper gives some academic backing to President Trump’s campaign promise. The paper found that banks would still be able to…

By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump likes to boast about how much money the U.S. Treasury is raking in from the massive taxes – tariffs — he’s slapped this year on imports from almost every country in the world. “We have trillions of dollars coming into our country,” Trump said Wednesday. “If we didn’t have tariffs, we would be a very poor nation and we would be taken advantage of by every other nation in the world, friend and foe.” But two courts have now ruled that his biggest and boldest import taxes are…

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST and MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is seeking a swift and definitive decision on tariffs from the Supreme Court that he helped shape, saying the country would be on “the brink of economic catastrophe” without the import taxes he has imposed on U.S. rivals and allies alike. The administration used near-apocalyptic terms that are highly unusual in Supreme Court filings as it asked the justices late Wednesday to intervene and reverse an appeals court ruling that found most of Trump’s tariffs are an illegal use of an emergency powers law. The tariffs…

Once upon a time, the Republican Party could be reliably counted on to oppose tax increases and at least sometimes oppose executive overreach. In the case of President Trump’s massive tax increases on consumers and businesses importing goods from abroad, we have seen the GOP reduced to silence or gibberish. On Friday, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that most Trump’s tax hikes exceed his authority. The Trump administration has relied upon the International Emergency Economic Powers Act from 1977 to claim broad authority to impose tax increases on imports. The “emergency” cited to justify this is the supposed…

In the first half of 2008, as the global financial system was crashing, 27,283 Inland Empire homes were sold. In the first six months of 2025, only 24,116 residences in Riverside and San Bernardino counties were bought, or 12% below the real estate market’s ugliest point. This is a stark reminder, courtesy of my trusty spreadsheet, of the depths of the recent homebuying collapse using sales data from Attom. These stats track a broad swath of transactions – including houses and condos, both existing residences and newly constructed. Think about how the pandemic era altered Inland Empire homebuying by examining…