Wed, Oct 30 2019, 9:07 AM
Partnerships and acquisitions are flying around like monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. (Okay, that was a reach, but I saw it in the bookstore yesterday so ...
Wed, Oct 30 2019, 8:33 AM
Mortgage originations in 2019 appear to be headed for their best year since 2007 . Make Fratantoni, chief economist and senior vice president of the M...
Wed, Oct 30 2019, 8:11 AM
Mortgage applications managed a tiny increase during the week ended October 25 even as interest rates moved slightly higher. The Mortgage Bankers Asso...
Tue, Oct 29 2019, 5:33 PM
The only way to read anything overly dramatic into today's bond trading would simply be to observe where it falls in the bigger picture. In other wor...
Tue, Oct 29 2019, 4:36 PM
You may have heard that the Federal Reserve is highly likely to cut rates this week. That is true. It's happening tomorrow . It would be a big surpris...
Tue, Oct 29 2019, 10:30 AM
Pending home sales posted a solid increase for the second straight month in September, more than doubling analysts' expectations. The National Associa...
Tue, Oct 29 2019, 9:48 AM
Rapid price gains, long dominated by cities in the West, appear to be shifting to the Southeast, at least those reflected in the S&P CoreLogic Case-Sh...
Tue, Oct 29 2019, 9:28 AM
Yesterday saw the bond market sell off in a fairly frustrating way. Granted, there was some justification for the initial overnight weakness courtesy...
Tue, Oct 29 2019, 8:19 AM
As noted in the commentary very early yesterday, a shade ahead of the actual details, the big news was the HUD/DOJ/False Claims Act announcement. Cutt...
Tue, Oct 29 2019, 8:10 AM
The U.S. Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a joint Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Monday setting out t...
Mon, Oct 28 2019, 5:32 PM
Mortgage rates increased again today as lenders continued to get caught up with 2 days of bond market weakness. When bonds are weaker, prices are movi...
Mon, Oct 28 2019, 9:52 AM
Last Friday's morning commentary wasn't necessarily fun to read for fans of low rates, but it was important to digest for those that want to be prepar...
Mon, Oct 28 2019, 8:28 AM
The Bank of Russia has reduced its benchmark interest rate to 6.5% from 7%, the sharpest cut in two years, and the EU has granted a Brexit extension t...
Fri, Oct 25 2019, 4:56 PM
Let's face it. It makes sense for the average bond trader to be more indecisive than normal right now. A no-deal Brexit was avoided this week (bad f...
Fri, Oct 25 2019, 3:44 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower for 3 days in a row as of yesterday afternoon. But that trend was likely to reverse based on the timing of yesterday's mark...
Fri, Oct 25 2019, 11:32 AM
Freddie Mac reported this week that its total mortgage portfolio increased at an annualized rate of 10.7 percent in September, down from 12.9 percent ...
Fri, Oct 25 2019, 11:17 AM
In about 2 weeks, the big bond rally of 2019 will officially be 1 year old (because it actually began in the 2nd week of November). This has been a u...
Fri, Oct 25 2019, 8:44 AM
There are plenty of well-paid people in the mortgage biz. It is good to keep things in perspective: The U.S. median household income was $63,179 in 20...
Thu, Oct 24 2019, 4:17 PM
At a few points in the past 2 days, it looked as if bonds were finally ready to move back toward lower yields after 2 weeks spent moving fairly quickl...
Thu, Oct 24 2019, 3:43 PM
Mortgage rates dropped at a modest pace for the 3rd straight day on Thursday. This brings them back in line with levels seen at the end of last week. ...
Thu, Oct 24 2019, 12:07 PM
With only one week until Halloween we are reminded that time flies. Dating back 2,000 years to the Celtic festival of Samhain, Halloween is an ancient...
Thu, Oct 24 2019, 11:00 AM
Homeowners continued to reduce and/or retire their mortgage debt at an accelerated clip in September according to Black Knight's "first look" at the m...
Thu, Oct 24 2019, 10:58 AM
New home sales came in at a respectable seasonally adjusted annual rate of 701,000 in September, down only 0.7 percent from the revised rate of 706,00...
Thu, Oct 24 2019, 8:31 AM
Yesterday was fairly uneventful as global markets generally cooled off after 2 big days of Brexit-related volatility at the beginning of the week. Fo...
Wed, Oct 23 2019, 5:04 PM
Mortgage rates moved a bit lower yesterday after hitting the highest levels in more than a month the day before. They kept the positive trend going to...
Wed, Oct 23 2019, 11:19 AM
Fannie Mae asked lenders, as part of its third quarter Mortgage Lender Sentiment Survey about their digital transformation efforts. The company says t...
Wed, Oct 23 2019, 11:08 AM
Home price increases slowed appreciably in August. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) said its House Price Index (HPI) was up 4.6 percent on an...
Wed, Oct 23 2019, 9:38 AM
Yesterday saw bonds respond almost exclusively to Brexit-related headlines (read THIS RECAP for a synopsis of the day's events and Brexit's impact on ...
Wed, Oct 23 2019, 9:08 AM
Last week the Mortgage Bankers Association’s survey showed that retail applications dropped almost 12% last week from the week before. Refis were down...
Wed, Oct 23 2019, 8:18 AM
Mortgage rates increased last week. Mortgage application activity, however, did not. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said its Market Composite ...
Tue, Oct 22 2019, 5:42 PM
First things first: all of the volatility we're about to discuss has been occurring inside a fairly narrow range in the slightly bigger picture. More...
Tue, Oct 22 2019, 4:38 PM
Mortgage rates recovered just a bit today after hitting the highest levels in more than a month yesterday. The inspiration for much of the recent upwa...
Tue, Oct 22 2019, 4:37 PM
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The case "Seila Law ...
Tue, Oct 22 2019, 11:00 AM
Sales of existing homes, which had posted advances in both July and August, fell back in September. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said s...
Tue, Oct 22 2019, 9:32 AM
Yesterday saw an extension of the recent selling trend in bonds with yields hitting the highest levels in more than a month. One might argue that yes...
Tue, Oct 22 2019, 8:27 AM
I am often asked about a primer for capital markets. Much of the training is “on the job,” but for anyone serious about learning the topic, here’s a g...
Mon, Oct 21 2019, 7:28 PM
Mortgage rates may have managed to remain mostly flat last week, but they did so near their highest levels in several weeks. After moving up at a mode...
Mon, Oct 21 2019, 11:53 AM
In an early article, we summarized the first part of a new report on America's aging population, especially as related to homeownership, published by ...
Mon, Oct 21 2019, 9:09 AM
Last week saw the US bond market fight off an intermittent barrage of weakness as global markets geared up for the weekend's big Brexit vote. By Fri...
Mon, Oct 21 2019, 8:19 AM
Great MLOs keep up on events not only impacting their loans but on events impacting the everyone else’s loans as well. For example, the Supreme Court ...
Fri, Oct 18 2019, 6:04 PM
Today was a throw-away day for the bond market. Yields matched their narrowest trading range of the week and ended the day at their most 'unchanged' ...
Fri, Oct 18 2019, 6:03 PM
Mortgage rates were flat today. In fact, they were very close to being flat on the week for that matter! This is a reflection of the bond markets curr...
Fri, Oct 18 2019, 1:46 PM
More than a quarter of new home purchases in 2018 were financed through non-conventional sources. Data from the Census Bureau's Survey of Construction...
Fri, Oct 18 2019, 11:11 AM
Even though the pace of home building remains below where the industry would like it to be, Fannie Mae says it helped drive residential fixed investme...
Fri, Oct 18 2019, 9:03 AM
Yesterday brought the highest yields in a month as Brexit-related optimism swelled early in the overnight session. At issue: British PM Johnson and E...
Fri, Oct 18 2019, 8:22 AM
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) says it expects that new home sales declined in September relative to August based on a drop in mortgage applic...
Fri, Oct 18 2019, 8:15 AM
Here’s a little trivia for you. What does San Francisco have six of that Manhattan has none of? Dirt roads ! I don’t know if the cost of maintaining a...
Thu, Oct 17 2019, 4:24 PM
The bond market has a lot on its mind right now. 2019 is proving to be very different from other episodes of big, protracted rate trends. In most pa...
Thu, Oct 17 2019, 3:40 PM
Mortgage rates didn't do much today, but risks are increasing that movement will be more brisk in the coming business days. Blame European politics--s...
Thu, Oct 17 2019, 10:20 AM
After posting some of the best results in a year the previous month, all three construction indicators fell back in September . The U.S. Census Bureau...
