Wed, Feb 12 2020, 9:17 AM
2 weeks ago, as rates plummeted toward the lowest levels in more than 3 years, I began to point out a very obvious caveat to the gains. Because coron...
Wed, Feb 12 2020, 8:15 AM
Applications for mortgage financing increased again during the week ended February 7 despite a significant decline in those for home purchases. The Mo...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 5:19 PM
Bonds were weaker in the overnight session as Chinese equities markets continued to bounce toward higher levels. This follows a head-fake toward lowe...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 3:51 PM
Mortgage rates were very slightly higher today after being modestly lower over the weekend, but in general, remain very close to the lowest levels in ...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 3:45 PM
Renters questions in a new Freddie Mac survey expressed a rather unfortunate misconception . In its new Profile of Today's Renter and Owner , the comp...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 3:40 PM
It seems as though legalized marijuana is said to be good for almost everything. Now a new study from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has a...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 10:10 AM
Amid a dearth of important economic data between now and Friday, the bond market doesn't have much to do when it comes to pricing in bigger-picture ec...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 8:51 AM
In 1988, there was only one city in America where the average home price was over six times the annual median income. Today there are more than twenty...
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...
