Mortgage applications to purchase a home are rising for two reasons: Buyer demand is increasing, and those buyers are afraid rates will go up dramatically, so they want to lock in fast.

(Read More: Depression Begone! Home Prices Set Record in April)

Alicia and Ryan Diederichs say they are in a race against time. A job transfer recently sent them and their three young children to Oceanside, Calif. Now crammed into a small rental apartment, they are hoping to buy a house quickly.

“I’m afraid we’re going to miss the boat,” said Alicia Diederichs. “I feel like we might get priced out of the market in a few months, and just depending on the mortgage payment whether we could afford it if the interest rates go up more.”

The Diederichs need a large house to fit their family, but home prices are rising fast on the California coast, and they have not yet locked in a mortgage rate.

“Ideally we would do a 30-year fixed, but it’s all going to be dependent on the end mortgage payment, what we can afford, so we would have to look at an ARM potentially if rates continue to rise,” she said.

(Read More: Mortgage Cop: Four Top Banks Fail Consumers)

The combination of sharply higher home prices and rising rates is squeezing buyers who are already facing tighter underwriting standards. In order to qualify for loans, they must fit into strict debt-to-income calculations, and those calculations change with every increase in mortgage rates.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100845777

(Read More: Housing Recovery Leaves Some Behind)

“I don’t buy it,” said Mark Hanson, a California-based housing analyst. “Yes, the investor will give them a chance to bid on it, but in this market Wall Street will put the houses on the MLS in hopes of a bidding war.”

Home prices are already moving higher across the nation, largely due to a severe lack of for-sale supply. Miller is unconcerned about the swift price increases and points to a mortgage credit thaw as a counter-balance.

(Read More: Home Buyers Are Back, but Where Are the Houses?)

The big banks say it is not so much a thaw on their side as improving consumer balance sheets.

“Credit standards haven’t changed in terms of solid fundamentals around income and documentation,” said Kevin Watters, CEO of mortgage banking at JPMorgan Chase. “What has changed a little bit: Consumers’ balance sheets have improved, so their debt is down.”

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100558148

In the latest report by RootMetrics, which measures mobile performance, ATT came out ahead of Verizon for overall data speeds and beat Verizon for how fast consumers can download their emails and other data. Verizon was quicker when it came to uploading data.

The report found that Sprint had the worst data speeds. In 61 percent to 76 percent of its tests, Sprint recorded download and upload speeds below 1.5 Mbps. Conversely, ATT, T-Mobile and Verizon recorded download speeds of 5 Mbps in almost 70 percent of its tests.

Meanwhile, Verizon dropped the smallest percentage of calls (less than 1 percent) and Metro PCS dropped the most. Verizon was also the fastest in sending text messages. Sprint was the slowest.

The combined scores of each of the top five carriers measured: Verizon 92; ATT 90; T-Mobile 70; MetroPCS 56; Sprint 49.

Article source: http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2012/08/10/verizon-gets-top-marks-for-phone-and-data-service/