Three weeks after adjourning, Federal Reserve officials release detailed minutes of their most recent meeting.

The April 30, 2008 minutes were released Wednesday and it affirmed traders’ beliefs that the Federal Reserve will not be in a hurry to lower the Fed Funds Rate again.

This is bad news for two groups of people whose borrowing costs are tied to Prime Rate, the interest rate that is 3 percentage points higher than the Fed Funds Rate:

1. Homeowners with home equity lines of credit
2. Americans with credit card debt

Because Prime Rate moves in lock-step with the Fed Funds Rate, it, too, has fallen by 3.25 percent since September and now rests at 5.000 percent.

With the release of the April FOMC Minutes, though, it appears that Prime Rate is more likely to increase than to decrease moving forward.

If your home equity line of credit offers a “convert-to-fixed-rate” option, now may be a good time to consider switching over. Be sure to talk with your loan officer first, though — he/she may have alternate options for you.

Loan-to-value is a math formula that represents the relationship between how much a home is “worth” and how much money is borrowed against it.

Loan-to-value is often abbreviated as “LTV” and is one of the many factors that lenders consider when underwriting a mortgage application.

The math formula is straightforward:

In the LTV equation, Loan Size is the amount of money borrowed from the bank and Home Value is the lower of the home’s purchase price or appraised value.

Home loans with low loan-to-value ratios are usually less risky for banks. This is one reason why mortgage rates tend to be more favorable for home buyers and homeowners when their respective LTVs are low.

Typically, a “low” LTV loan is one in which the loan-to-value is 80 percent or less. In some instances, however, 70 percent is considered “low”. The cut-off point depends on the mortgage lender and the mortgage product.

On a home purchase, the one way to lower LTV is to make a larger downpayment, thereby reducing the LTV equation’s numerator. Buying a home for below-market value would not reduce LTV, for example, because the purchase price would be used as the equation’s denominator.

On a home loan refinance, the denominator is always the home’s appraised value.

Yesterday, several mortgage lenders issued three separate “rate sheets” in response to the changing mortgage market.

It was the fourth time in the last 6 trading days that mortgage lenders issued multiple rate sheets in a day, and continued the trend that started in mid-January.

The yo-yo nature of mortgage rates underscores the importance of making mortgage rate comparisons within a limited time frame.

Multiple quotes should be gathered with an hour of each other and, even then, it’s prudent to ask your lender: “Has there been a mortgage rate reprice in the last hour?”

The current market volatility is in contrast to the “normal” environment of one-rate-sheet-per-day to which mortgage rate shoppers have been accustomed. But with the changing economy, we all have to adapt.

Mortgage rate quotes from this morning won’t necessarily be valid this afternoon so if you’re in the market for a home loan, be sure to do your shopping in a limited timeframe and don’t forget to ask about the reprice.

It’s not often that a mainstream media publication taunts renters into buying homes, but that’s exactly what Smart Money does in its latest issue.

The Smart Money Web site “lead-in” reads 5 (Lame) Excuses for Not Buying a Home. That’s a forceful title!

It’s unfortunate that renters could feel antagonized by the author’s tone because the article raises very good counter-points to the more popular reasons why renters avoid homeownership.

Owning a home is a serious responsibility and does require commitment. However, a renter should not feel bullied or hurried into buying because for as much as personal economics are at play, personal emotions are at play, too. Both deserve respect.

So, renters: Put your blinders on and give the Smart Money article a read. There’s good advice in there once you get past the author’s bias.