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--...
Mon, Nov 18 2019, 2:03 PM
Home builder confidence fell back slightly this month, declining by 1 point to 70 in the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Hous...
Mon, Nov 18 2019, 11:54 AM
FHA loans posted a substantial decline in delinquencies during the third quarter, leading an overall improvement in loan performance. The Mortgage Ban...
Mon, Nov 18 2019, 10:38 AM
Last week provided a much-needed recovery that counteracted some of the fast-paced selling seen in the first week of November. Despite the friendly d...
Mon, Nov 18 2019, 10:12 AM
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has issued an Interpretive Rule for one type of loan originator licensing. The Secure and Fair Enforce...
Mon, Nov 18 2019, 8:53 AM
Do you dread “Smonday?” (That’s when Sunday stops feeling like a Sunday, and the anxiety of Monday kicks in.) Here is something to dread. All this tal...
Fri, Nov 15 2019, 7:06 PM
Yields broke up and out of their prevailing range last week and took the present week to focus on reentry. While those efforts went a long way toward...
Fri, Nov 15 2019, 6:06 PM
Mortgage rates finished the week in much better territory compared to last Friday. Today only added modestly to that move, but the simple act of movin...
Fri, Nov 15 2019, 8:59 AM
This week I’ve been running football quotes in the joke section at the bottom. Thanks to Gary B. who sent Chuck Noll’s, “Pressure is something you fee...
Fri, Nov 15 2019, 8:31 AM
It's Friday and that means it's time to be on the lookout for unexpected trade-related headlines, especially in the afternoon. Those sorts of newswir...
Thu, Nov 14 2019, 4:59 PM
Look closely and you will see that a lack of new home construction is behind almost every problem facing housing today. Residential construction has s...
Thu, Nov 14 2019, 4:58 PM
By the end of last week, although there was potentially a sliver of hope afforded by Friday's highs being slightly lower than Thursday's, it looked li...
Thu, Nov 14 2019, 4:24 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower again today. Whereas it was a bit easier to be dismissive about recent improvements, they're starting to add up at this poi...
Thu, Nov 14 2019, 9:32 AM
Bonds gave us quite a scare last week as key technical ceilings gave way. High volume and concrete fundamental justification added validity to the mo...
Thu, Nov 14 2019, 8:54 AM
Some people save $2.95 a day by making coffee at home rather than stopping at Dunkin’ or Starbucks. It adds up! Something didn’t add up for WeWork whi...
Wed, Nov 13 2019, 5:44 PM
Mortgage rates have been more willing to move higher than lower recently. While that may continue to be the case in the near-term future, there have b...
Wed, Nov 13 2019, 10:03 AM
The most defining moment of the big 2019 bond rally was undoubtedly the August 1st tariff announcement and the resulting massive reaction in both yiel...
