Thu, Dec 3 2020, 4:43 PM
Tomorrow brings the month's most important economic report: the Employment Situation, often referred to simply as "the jobs report." No other piece of...
Thu, Dec 3 2020, 4:29 PM
Bonds Find Their Range Ahead of Jobs Report
The first 2 days of the month (yesterday and the day before) wer...
Thu, Dec 3 2020, 1:09 PM
An analysis published on Black Knight's blog indicates that rents and home prices don't always rise or fall in tandem. The company says comparing tren...
Thu, Dec 3 2020, 10:09 AM
With the COVID pandemic, it doesn’t quite seem like we’re in the middle of pro football season, although apparently the folks in Jacksonville will do ...
Thu, Dec 3 2020, 9:19 AM
What is a "dip buyer?" A "dip" refers to a drop in the price of an asset in the financial markets. In this case, a dip in bond prices would correspo...
Wed, Dec 2 2020, 4:19 PM
Although it was the focus of yesterday's discussion , the ability of the mortgage market to hold steady in the face of bond market weakness continues ...
Wed, Dec 2 2020, 4:06 PM
Breaking Down The Crazy Relationship of MBS, Mortgage Rates, and Treasuries
Bonds showed up to sell today--a...
Wed, Dec 2 2020, 3:08 PM
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has published its 2021 Forward Mortgage Limits for FHA loans. The FHA limits are based on the Fe...
Wed, Dec 2 2020, 11:17 AM
Fun with numbers for Hump Day! Numbers were behind HP’s decision to leave California for Houston. Thank you to Len T. who sent a great chart of the na...
Wed, Dec 2 2020, 9:25 AM
Following yesterday's sharp losses, the bond market didn't do much overnight, nor is it doing much to push back in the other direction this morning. ...
Wed, Dec 2 2020, 8:08 AM
There was the usual disruption to mortgage application activity during the Thanksgiving holiday week that ended November 27, although the volume, espe...
Tue, Dec 1 2020, 4:06 PM
Serious Sell-Off in Bonds. Time to Panic?
A new month brought in new momentum for the bond market--a lot of...
Tue, Dec 1 2020, 4:05 PM
Like many industries, housing finance has a superficial layer that's fairly easy to understand for the average consumer. A person wants a home. They d...
Tue, Dec 1 2020, 11:39 AM
Total construction spending in October was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.439 trillion according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. This was...
Tue, Dec 1 2020, 10:44 AM
That the rapid rise in home prices since spring is setting near decade long highs was confirmed again this week , this time by CoreLogic. The company ...
Tue, Dec 1 2020, 10:08 AM
In equity news, despite some predictions to the contrary , the market had its best month since 1987. This, in the face of renewed layoffs and economic...
Tue, Dec 1 2020, 9:34 AM
Remember the end of July? We were worried that an entire month of gains in bonds could give way to a momentum shift in August. It did. September br...
Mon, Nov 30 2020, 4:43 PM
Although many mortgage lenders were technically open for business last Friday, it's a well-known unofficial holiday. Mortgage rate movement requires b...
Mon, Nov 30 2020, 4:19 PM
Uneventful Month-End Day For Bonds, But MBS Outperform
Final trial results for Moderna's vaccine (it's still...
Mon, Nov 30 2020, 11:22 AM
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has released the new conforming loan limits which will be in place next year for mortgages acquired by the G...
Mon, Nov 30 2020, 11:12 AM
While this COVID-19 positive year has certainly been an exception, spring is usually considered the optimum time , on both sides of the transaction, t...
Mon, Nov 30 2020, 10:44 AM
Pending home sales, which ended a four-month streak of gains in September with a 2.2 percent decline, slipped further in October. The National Associa...
Mon, Nov 30 2020, 10:08 AM
Thanksgiving week can't ever be fully trusted to provide an accurate glimpse of market momentum. In this year's case, it didn't really say much anywa...
Mon, Nov 30 2020, 9:51 AM
Thank you to Tracy C. sent, “An unemployed court jester is nobody’s fool.” There are millions of unemployed U.S. citizens, and the CFPB, HUD, and othe...
Fri, Nov 27 2020, 9:21 AM
For the US bond market, the day after Thanksgiving is frequently a reflection of the EU bond market. Strength in EU bonds translated to 10yr yields im...
Fri, Nov 27 2020, 9:17 AM
Despite a second consecutive modest weekly increase , the number of loans in forbearance continue to trend well below those at the peak of the COVID-1...
Fri, Nov 27 2020, 9:17 AM
Left over pumpkin pie for breakfast today? Have you begun your company’s Holiday Cookbook yet? (Help corporate culture by sending an email, ad a recip...
Wed, Nov 25 2020, 3:44 PM
Fed Minutes Hurt MBS, But Not Quite As Badly As It Seemed
Today's Fed Minutes offered a more detailed accoun...
Wed, Nov 25 2020, 11:47 AM
Freddie Mac reported this week that its total mortgage portfolio increased at an annualized rate of 25.7 percent in October compared to a 17.5 percent...
Wed, Nov 25 2020, 11:25 AM
Sales of newly constructed single-family homes slipped slightly in October; the second month sales have declined. The U.S. Census Bureau and Departmen...
Wed, Nov 25 2020, 10:12 AM
Here it is! The trading community's ONE guaranteed chance of the year for a 4.5-day weekend. Even though Wednesday is never officially designated as...
Wed, Nov 25 2020, 9:36 AM
Second only to the excitement of the new phone book coming, the new conforming loan limit is $548,250 for 2021 , up from $510,400 in 2020, and some in...
Wed, Nov 25 2020, 9:21 AM
Refinancing increased its already overwhelming dominance of the mortgage market during the week ended November 20. The Mortgage Bankers Association (M...
Tue, Nov 24 2020, 4:44 PM
Modest Weakness Persists as Markets Rotate Back Toward Risk
Whether we want to pin the blame on Trump's will...
Tue, Nov 24 2020, 4:42 PM
If you follow the MBS Commentary channel on this site, you will have already seen most of the following, but it's relevant for consumers as well. As f...
Tue, Nov 24 2020, 1:30 PM
If you'd like to read the official FHFA press release, here you go, but here's the skinny on the new conforming loan limit of $548,250 for 2021, up fr...
Tue, Nov 24 2020, 11:14 AM
Annual price increases in September were quite literally off the charts . Both the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Index and the Housing Market In...
Tue, Nov 24 2020, 10:59 AM
Remember when you drove to work every day? For non-mortgage kicks, here’s a site where you can take a virtual drive through dozens of cities around th...
Tue, Nov 24 2020, 10:02 AM
With very little by way of significant data or events as far as financial markets are concerned, today's most interesting revelation will be FHFA's an...
Mon, Nov 23 2020, 5:01 PM
Everything is relative when it comes to following day-to-day movements in mortgage rates . Yes, they're technically higher than they were on Friday af...
Mon, Nov 23 2020, 4:34 PM
Bond Market Weakness Introduce Risk of In-Range Bounce
Bonds were weaker overnight following European econom...
Mon, Nov 23 2020, 1:39 PM
A recent survey by Lending Tree found that nearly half of Americans are thinking about moving in the not-to-distant future and it appears that the COV...
Mon, Nov 23 2020, 10:18 AM
Any time there's at least a moderate amount of movement in the overnight session, a consensus typically emerges as to the key driver of said movement....
Mon, Nov 23 2020, 10:07 AM
Black Knight, in its "first look" at the month's loan data, says that mortgage delinquencies improved for the fifth consecutive month in October. The ...
Mon, Nov 23 2020, 10:02 AM
Sunday morning I was trying to explain to my cat Myrtle how the total cost of rescuing a stranded Matt Damon in all of his films (think Saving Private...
Fri, Nov 20 2020, 3:43 PM
Bonds Are Boring Today, So Let's Talk About 1.5 UMBS
Treasuries did little to react to a smattering of poten...
Fri, Nov 20 2020, 12:07 PM
The forbearance plan rolls expanded slightly over the past week, reversing two weeks of falling numbers. Black Knight said the total of loans in appro...
Fri, Nov 20 2020, 11:18 AM
There are no significant events on the economic calendar today, and it is the last full trading day of the last full trading week before the winter ho...
Fri, Nov 20 2020, 10:10 AM
Many years ago I was hanging out with George Clooney and made the mistake of telling him, “Look, you’ll never amount to much as an actor. You’d be muc...
Thu, Nov 19 2020, 5:27 PM
Ellie Mae said the interest rate across all closed loans dropped below 3 percent for the first time in the nine years the company has been tracking th...
