Daily Mortgage Rates Updates

Holding Steady From Last Week

Wed, 7 May 2008 06:59:00 EDT

This week began in slow fashion as there were next to no scheduled economic reports that affected mortgage rates. When data is in short supply, traders turn to the stock market to get clues about how to invest in MBS. Stocks have had some ups and downs this week, but are generally even with the end of last week. As a result, MBS are even as well.

The activity level picks...

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Economy Loses Less Jobs Than Expected, Rates Suffer

Fri, 2 May 2008 13:12:00 EDT

The Employment Situation report was released today. The most important component of this report is the Non-Farm-Payrolls. Analysts had predicted that this number would read negative 75,000.

However, the actual reading was only negative 20,000. This is significantly better than expected and adds to what some consider to be growing evidence that the economy is pullin...

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Rates improve again ahead of the Fed Announcement

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:23:00 EDT

The same interest rate today will probably cost you about .25 less than it did yesterday. This is due to the market gearing up for what it hopes will be a bond-friendly announcement from the Fed (recall that mortgage bonds are directly responsible for interest rates. The higher the price of bonds, the lower the interest rate. So "bond-friendly" for traders is good for you).
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Some Relief After A Bit Of A Rough Week

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:24:00 EDT

We saw a lot of volatility last week for mortgage rates. This is often the case on weeks where there is a limited amount of scheduled economic release data.

This week is the opposite. There is a significant amount of data for the markets to digest ranging from the Federal Reserve's interest rate announcement, closely watched inflation measures, manufacturing data, consumer dat...

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So Much For Uneventful

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:02:00 EDT

Rates are up sharply this morning as two key economic reports were not favorable to mortgage bond traders. Jobless Claims and Durable Goods Orders (excluding transportation) both came in better than analysts had anticipated. News that is good for the economy in general is usually bad for mortgage rates. This occurs for several reasons, but the most basic of which being that mo...

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dropping

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:56:00 EDT

If you already have rates this morning and have not yet locked, now would be a good time.

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Broken Record?

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:10:00 EDT

I hate to sound like a broken record, but it is, yet again, an uneventful day for mortgage rates (so far).

There was some data released that seemed to hurt mortgage rates: AMBAC, a large bonds insurer announced a larger than expected loss due to its mortgage related activities. But other economic weakness including corporate profits and a worse than expected report on Mortgage appli...

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Another Uneventful Day For Mortgage Rates

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:01:00 EDT

As we have discussed on this blog many times, the only financial instrument that directly impacts mortgage rates is the Mortgage Backed Security, which we commonly refer to as MBS. MBS are traded just like bonds, so when demand goes up, price goes up. When price goes up, yield falls. The yield moves in direct proportion (more or less) to the interest rates that lenders offer.<...

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