Mon, Feb 10 2020, 11:01 AM
Last Friday's January Employment Situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was a good one; total payroll employment increased by 225,000, b...
Mon, Feb 10 2020, 9:36 AM
If the US/Iran flare up provided an opening act to the unexpected drama of 2020, coronavirus has been the headliner. Before these two events took the...
Mon, Feb 10 2020, 9:11 AM
The U.S. is divided up into regions. Have you ever noticed that we say, “Out West” or “Back East” – a holdover from centuries ago. It’s never, “Back W...
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 5:23 PM
Today's big to-do was a paradoxical bond market rally in response to a much stronger-than-expected jobs report. This wasn't just a case of a compelli...
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 3:56 PM
Mortgage rates completely defied the odds. They even defied convention. Specifically, they managed to move appreciably lower even though today's big j...
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 3:37 PM
Fannie Mae's Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI) is on a roll. The company's index, based on some of the results from Fannie Mae's National Housing S...
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 12:37 PM
It seems every data source in the housing industry has its own definition of affordability, most using a mortgage payment to income ratio based on med...
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 10:18 AM
Here's one of those NFP mornings where it would have been very hard to predict what we're seeing in bonds based on what we've seen in the NFP numbers....
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 9:09 AM
I can’t predict the future, don’t even know what I’m doing for lunch today, but in October this commentary suggested that with the MOU inked in Octobe...
Thu, Feb 6 2020, 4:42 PM
The availability of mortgage credit declined slightly last month. The Mortgage Bankers Association said its Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI) ...
Thu, Feb 6 2020, 4:40 PM
The bond market took a break from the past 3 days of weakness today. There weren't any significant economic reports or news events (not as far as the...
Thu, Feb 6 2020, 4:00 PM
Mortgage rates managed to hold steady , for the most part, today. Some lenders were offering slightly better or worse terms compared to yesterday, but...
Thu, Feb 6 2020, 9:23 AM
One of the most stunning and profound features of the past week of trading days has been the intensely higher volumes-especially in the overnight trad...
Thu, Feb 6 2020, 9:07 AM
For years there has been name confusion between Fannie Mae and Fannie May . Name overlap isn’t limited to those two; MERS, familiar to mortgage banker...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 6:14 PM
So far, the correction to the coronavirus bond market rally is only a few days old, but it became much more problematic today. Yesterday was arguably...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 5:28 PM
Mortgage rates moved higher again today as investors reacted to updates about the coronavirus outbreak. This has been the dominant motivation for the ...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 11:37 AM
The Urban Institute (UI) says the five government mortgage lenders and their various ways of accounting for income-driven repayment (IDR) plans are in...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 9:43 AM
Heading into this morning, it looked as if bonds would have a fighting chance, at the very least. The fight in question is against the big bounce tow...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 9:04 AM
Let’s take any brokerage or small mortgage banker, 10 loan officers doing an average of 3 loans per month for 30 loans/month. The company has the oper...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 8:13 AM
Mortgage application volume continues to benefit from lower interest rates. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said today that its Market Composit...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 6:27 PM
We knew we'd have to deal with it at some point, and now we have to wonder if it's already here: the coronavirus bounce.
Why did we know it was c...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 6:03 PM
Mortgage rates have been on a tear recently. The average lender has either held rates steady or improved them every single day since January 16th. Som...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 2:26 PM
Almost 200 senior mortgage lenders told Fannie Mae about their plans to both acquire and keep customers through the company's Fourth Quarter Mortgage ...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 10:15 AM
Home price increases, as measured by CoreLogic's Home Price Index (HPI) continued to pick up speed in December on an annual basis. However, they pulle...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 9:32 AM
In many respects, the market response to the coronavirus outbreak has been able to take cues from past experience with SARS in 2002/2003. In many oth...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 9:02 AM
Fitness instructor: “Have you ever done a marathon?” Me: “You mean like on Netflix?” Both take stamina (of some sort), as does merely looking at the U...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 6:28 PM
Today's key scheduled event was the release of the ISM Manufacturing PMI--one of the several most important reports after the perennial heavy hitter, ...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 5:39 PM
In the world of interest rates, it's good to be a mortgage today . The dominant species on that world is US Treasuries: the quintessential dollar-base...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 12:44 PM
Total construction spending ended 2019 down slightly from the prior year. The U.S. Census Bureau said the total value of construction, both public and...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 10:22 AM
Black Knight, it the current edition of its Mortgage Monitor covering December mortgage performance data, writes an epitaph for slowing home price app...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 9:18 AM
The total count of confirmed coronavirus cases will continue to grow for quite some time (several months, perhaps). Markets and epidemiologists alike...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 8:57 AM
“I boarded a Southwest flight over the weekend, sat down, sneezed, and muttered something in Mandarin. I had the whole row to myself for entire flight...
Fri, Jan 31 2020, 6:43 PM
The homeownership rate seems stubbornly stuck only a few percentage points from where it bottomed out in the second quarter of 2016. The U.S. Census B...
Fri, Jan 31 2020, 6:07 PM
When the World Health Organization declared coronavirus an international health emergency yesterday, there were two schools of thought. At first glan...
Fri, Jan 31 2020, 5:38 PM
Mortgage rates inched even lower today as the market resumed efforts to react to and account for risks surrounding the coronavirus outbreak. Weaker ec...
Fri, Jan 31 2020, 9:12 AM
Yesterday offered up a fairly intense trading session for the bond market. Yields moved to the lowest levels in months with 10yr Treasuries hitting 1...
Fri, Jan 31 2020, 9:02 AM
Interesting times. Our CFPB has a new Chief Experience Officer . United Wholesale has an ad in the Super Bowl , recommending brokers to consumers. Exp...
Thu, Jan 30 2020, 3:11 PM
Mortgage rates improved again today as the market continued to react to updates on the coronavirus outbreak. For top tier scenarios, the average lende...
Thu, Jan 30 2020, 12:05 PM
In the throes of the housing crisis, it sometimes seemed as though FHA was the only way to finance a home purchase , especially for those with less th...
Thu, Jan 30 2020, 10:35 AM
With the Fed out of the way, coronavirus cases still growing rapidly, and no major correction seen in the bond market, the question on everyone's mind...
Thu, Jan 30 2020, 9:00 AM
What if you bought into an investment thinking you were going to earn a decent return for 30 years and instead it paid off in four months? Not only th...
Thu, Jan 30 2020, 8:51 AM
Homeownership is apparently still one of the best ways to build wealth. The Year-End Home Sales Report from ATTOM Data Solutions shows that the typica...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 5:08 PM
It's fashionable to criticize Fed Chair Powell for negatively affecting the bond market during his customary press conference on Fed Announcement da...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 4:37 PM
Mortgage rates regained their footing today, moving back to long-term lows after pausing to move slightly higher yesterday. The definition of "long-te...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 2:02 PM
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in OctoberDecember indicates that the labor market remains strong and that economic a...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 10:35 AM
December's pending home sales erased the small gain posted in November and the National Association of Realtors' (NAR's) Pending Home Sales Index (PHS...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 9:39 AM
Imagine a world where the Federal Reserve was here to entertain and comment on sports betting rather than offer dry, carefully worded updates on monet...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 9:25 AM
Bonds are holding below what had been a yield floor since mid-October. Yesterday raised some concern about the recently stronger trend reversing, but...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 9:08 AM
My cat Myrtle never paid much attention to Brexit, up until recently a hopeless parliamentary quagmire. (“Brexistential fear”: An irrational fear that...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 8:14 AM
Refinancing continues to dominate mortgage activity, spurred by another dip in mortgage rates. The Mortgage Banker Association (MBA) said the volume o...
