30-year mortgage rate drops to 3.75%

30-year mortgage rate drops to 3.75%

WASHINGTON

Average U.S. rates on 30-year and 15-year fixed mortgages dropped to record lows again this week, with the 15-year loan dipping below 3 percent for the first time.

Low rates have helped brighten the outlook for home sales this year. They have made home-buying and refinancing more attractive to those who can qualify.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average rate on the 30-year loan fell to 3.75 percent. That’s down from 3.78 percent last week and the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s.

The 15-year mortgage, a popular refinancing option, slipped to 2.97 percent. That’s down from 3.04 percent last week.

Rates on the 30-year loan have been below 4 percent since early December. The low rates are a key reason the housing industry is showing modest signs of a recovery this year.

Google lashes out at Microsoft, Nokia

SAN FRANCISCO

Google lashed out at Microsoft and Nokia in a regulatory complaint, accusing them of illegally feeding mobile patents to a technology troll scavenging for billions of dollars in licensing fees that threaten to drive up the prices of cellphones and other wireless devices.

The claims were spelled out Thursday in a complaint filed with the European Commission, the chief regulator on that continent. Google Inc. also shared the complaint with the U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission.

Microsoft Corp. brushed off Google’s accusations as the “desperate tactic” of a company facing regulatory questions about its dominance of online search and digital advertising. Efforts to reach Nokia Corp. representatives at the company’s headquarters in Finland late Thursday were unsuccessful.

EU to Spain: Come clean on bailout plan

MADRID

The European Union urged Spain on Thursday to come clean on how it plans to finance the overhaul of its banking sector, warning that uncertainty over this has contributed the recent market turmoil and the country’s soaring borrowing costs.

A European Commission spokesman, Amadeu Altafaj, told Spanish National Radio that the conservative government in Madrid needed to spell out quickly how it plans to finance the recapitalization of troubled lender Bankia SA and whether there are other banks burdened by toxic real-estate assets that might need assistance.

The government nationalized Bankia earlier this month, and the $23.6 billion in public money that will need to be injected is more than twice what the government had estimated.

Doubts over how recession-hit Spain will handle the bailout have sparked concerns that the country itself soon will follow Greece, Portugal and Ireland in asking for financial assistance. Spain’s borrowing costs on the international debt markets — a sign of investor confidence in how well it can pay off its debt — have hit worrying levels while its stock prices have been taking a pounding.

Associated Press