Mon, Dec 2 2019, 12:05 PM
The nation's total spending on construction projects was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.291 trillion in October, 1.1 percent higher than a...
Mon, Dec 2 2019, 10:10 AM
Welcome to the last few trading weeks of 2019--3 or them to be precise. After that, the Christmas and New Year holidays will mean we can't trust the ...
Mon, Dec 2 2019, 10:07 AM
We started this piece by noting that Freddie Mac's economists wrapped up November in an unusually brief summary. Then we realized we had said almost e...
Mon, Dec 2 2019, 8:14 AM
Did your company make any money in the 3rd quarter? I hope so, and I hope the 4th quarter is looking bright as well. (Just like I hope that MLOs on yo...
Fri, Nov 29 2019, 9:48 AM
Due to the holiday-shortened work week, today's economic calendar is empty and Wednesday's was about as clogged as it ever gets, with the following re...
Fri, Nov 29 2019, 8:53 AM
There are seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and each region has a President. For 2019, the annual salary for the ...
Wed, Nov 27 2019, 2:51 PM
Freddie Mac reported this week that its total mortgage portfolio increased at an annualized rate of 3.0 percent in October, down from 10.7 percent the...
Wed, Nov 27 2019, 2:38 PM
Mortgage rates moved slightly higher today, leaving them roughly in the middle of November's narrow range. Although banks and many mortgage lenders wi...
Wed, Nov 27 2019, 10:13 AM
Pending home sales slipped in October after two months of solid gains. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said its Pending Home Sale Index (P...
Wed, Nov 27 2019, 9:18 AM
Loan officers know that rent is a “piece of the puzzle,” “a part of the equation” in the homebuying decision. They should be glad to know that the typ...
Wed, Nov 27 2019, 8:11 AM
Joel Kan, Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting for the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) says low rates are continuing to ke...
Tue, Nov 26 2019, 5:24 PM
For those of you who are MBS Live members, yes, the recap title is the same as the MBS Huddle. Sorry for the lack of creativity, but this is an unins...
Tue, Nov 26 2019, 4:31 PM
Mortgage rates recovered today after moving higher for the first time in nearly 2 weeks yesterday. In the bigger picture, rates have been in a back-an...
Tue, Nov 26 2019, 11:55 AM
The conforming loan limit for most of the U.S. will, quite predictably, move higher on January 1. The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced on Tues...
Tue, Nov 26 2019, 10:56 AM
The headline for the new home sales report for October was the year-over-year increase in sales. While sales of newly constructed homes were actually ...
Tue, Nov 26 2019, 10:28 AM
While it is only incremental, home price increases appear to have stopped decelerating and are again creeping slowly upward . Both the S&P CoreLogic C...
Tue, Nov 26 2019, 9:10 AM
Bonds have been doing fairly well for the past 2.5 weeks as yields have backed down from the 3-month highs seen at the beginning of the month. Over t...
Tue, Nov 26 2019, 8:54 AM
“Rob, with the announcement a while back that Quicken Loans inked a mortgage deal with Charles Schwab, and now with Schwab buying TD Ameritrade, do yo...
Mon, Nov 25 2019, 4:28 PM
Attempting to competently perform bond market analysis on Thanksgiving week is a dangerous game. It will either drive a person insane(r), or simply l...
Mon, Nov 25 2019, 4:08 PM
Mortgage rates finally moved a bit higher today after avoiding such things for nearly 2 full weeks. The losses were mild today, but nonetheless take t...
Mon, Nov 25 2019, 1:14 PM
An LO from Wyoming recently reminded me that, “At the end of the day we sell a product driven by rates.” And we may be at, or near, these rates for a ...
Mon, Nov 25 2019, 1:04 PM
Mortgage prepayments continued unabated in October, even though interest rates rose during the month. In its "first look" at October loan performance ...
Mon, Nov 25 2019, 9:11 AM
I've been staring at this blank space on my monitor, where I normally put the words for the opening post of the day/week, for about 40 minutes, trying...
Fri, Nov 22 2019, 5:53 PM
'Twasn't the night before Christmas today, but 'twas the week before Thanksgiving. The "stirring creature" quotient is in the same ballpark. And for...
Fri, Nov 22 2019, 5:34 PM
Mortgage rates ended their recent winning streak yesterday, but they have yet to try to get a losing streak started! In other words, rates bottomed ou...
Fri, Nov 22 2019, 11:44 AM
Apparently it is time to shift our total attention from the Millennial generation. A new survey from Freddie Mac introduces the housing hopes and drea...
Fri, Nov 22 2019, 10:39 AM
I'm sorry if the following is starting to sound like a broken record, but it's all we really have at the moment. The bond market encounters these sor...
Fri, Nov 22 2019, 8:48 AM
Many believe that 3-D printed houses will be the wave of the future in construction, and there’s someone in this article talking about printing 1,000 ...
Fri, Nov 22 2019, 8:06 AM
Lower interest rates translated to higher volume in the third quarter of the year, giving mortgage companies their highest profits in seven years. The...
Thu, Nov 21 2019, 4:40 PM
Today brought one of the week's only potentially important economic reports in the form of the Philly Fed Index, but it fell on deaf ears. Notably, t...
Thu, Nov 21 2019, 4:18 PM
Mortgage rates spent a 2nd day with the average lender holding relatively steady . This follows a decent winning streak over the previous week and a h...
Thu, Nov 21 2019, 11:24 AM
Existing-home sales got back on track in October, partially recovering from a 2.2 percent slip in September that ended a two-month winning streak. The...
Thu, Nov 21 2019, 10:50 AM
The boom continued in October as more than half of the loans closed during the month were for refinancing . According to Ellie Mae's Origination Insig...
Thu, Nov 21 2019, 10:22 AM
Much of 2019 has been "interesting" from an analytical standpoint. Things were happening. Markets were reacting. Movement was big and directional. ...
Thu, Nov 21 2019, 9:05 AM
Government shutdown worries, the impeachment hearings, the trade war, video of a bear stuck in a car near Lake Tahoe … Is there anything good happenin...
Wed, Nov 20 2019, 5:10 PM
There were 2 sorts of trade headlines in play today, but before we get to those, I wrote something today that bears repeating.
"The trade deal, in...
Wed, Nov 20 2019, 4:45 PM
Mortgage rates are in the midst of a winning streak of moderate size and duration. Specifically, rates have improved by at least an eighth of a percen...
Wed, Nov 20 2019, 10:48 AM
Mortgage brokers have apparently reclaimed both their reputations and their market share in recent years according to Archana Pradhan, a risk manageme...
Wed, Nov 20 2019, 9:58 AM
Applications for mortgages to purchase newly constructed homes surged in October and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is expecting that sales wi...
Wed, Nov 20 2019, 9:35 AM
Bonds are on a roll at the moment with 5 of the last 6 trading days resulting in lower yields. Rather than stand as some evidence of new strength in ...
Wed, Nov 20 2019, 8:49 AM
A new analysis from the real estate brokerage firm Redfin shows the typical homeowner in the United States now stays in their house for 13 years, five...
Wed, Nov 20 2019, 8:09 AM
Despite the Veterans' Day holiday which shortened the work week of November 15, purchase mortgage applications gained momentum. The Mortgage Bankers A...
Tue, Nov 19 2019, 5:13 PM
There's something special (and especially frustrating) about certain summertime Mondays. This is true not only because you might have been doing some...
Tue, Nov 19 2019, 3:29 PM
Mortgage rates had a great week last week and haven't done anything to jeopardize that so far this week. Today was the first time during these 2 weeks...
Tue, Nov 19 2019, 1:50 PM
A pass rate of 51% on July’s California bar exam may not seem like cause for celebration, but it’s the first time in six years that a majority of peop...
Tue, Nov 19 2019, 1:31 PM
Fannie Mae's economists are predicting that economic growth will slow significantly in the fourth quarter to 1.6 percent. This downward revision howev...
Tue, Nov 19 2019, 10:04 AM
All three of the residential construction measures tracked by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development roared back i...
Tue, Nov 19 2019, 9:40 AM
Daily and overnight trading volumes have been declining, and intraday trading ranges have been getting more narrow. The starting point for that trend...
Mon, Nov 18 2019, 4:51 PM
As 2019 winds down, investors have never been so broadly certain about the overall market thesis. Unfortunately, that thesis calls for unavoidable un...
Mon, Nov 18 2019, 4:27 PM
Mortgage rates added to last week's improvement with another modest drop today. That brings the average lender to the best levels in exactly 2 weeks--...
