Thu, Aug 22 2019, 2:42 PM
Sources are telling Bloomberg that a report on the White House's plan to release Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) from their 11-year long conserv...
Thu, Aug 22 2019, 9:01 AM
Thank you to everyone who wrote yesterday correcting me that Hawai’i’s 1959 statehood is 60 years old and not 50. I know it’s not the case, but someti...
Thu, Aug 22 2019, 8:52 AM
In the day just passed, bonds digested and reacted to the minutes from the latest Fed meeting (from late July). Given that the Fed cut rates at that ...
Thu, Aug 22 2019, 8:41 AM
There was a dramatic drop in the average note rate for loans originated in July and the refi share of those originations rose significantly. The July ...
Thu, Aug 22 2019, 8:13 AM
Black Knight said on Thursday that the national delinquency rate fell back by 7.27 percent in July , erasing last month's increase that was caused in ...
Wed, Aug 21 2019, 5:33 PM
Today brought the (not very) much-anticipated FOMC Minutes--a more detailed account of the conversation that transpired at the end of July when the Fe...
Wed, Aug 21 2019, 4:58 PM
Mortgage rates moved higher today, and it had nothing to do with any of the day's events or news headlines. Quite simply put, the bond market (which d...
Wed, Aug 21 2019, 11:19 AM
Existing home sales returned to an upward track in July after dipping 1.7 percent in June. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said pre-owned ...
Wed, Aug 21 2019, 10:14 AM
In the day just passed, a modest uptrend in yields was "defeated" from a technical standpoint. Yields broke below a trend-line marking "higher lows" ...
Wed, Aug 21 2019, 8:43 AM
Congratulations to Hawaii which became a state fifty years ago today. We’ve had plenty of economic cycles, small and large, in fifty years, although i...
Wed, Aug 21 2019, 8:16 AM
Residential construction has been famously slow for several years and some new analysis of Census data by the National Association of Home Builders (N...
Wed, Aug 21 2019, 8:11 AM
The volume of mortgage applications continued to be shored up by refinancing during the week ended August 16, but overall activity was down. The Mortg...
Tue, Aug 20 2019, 5:41 PM
Bonds were breathing easy by the time the domestic session got underway. Before that, they kicked off the overnight session in lower yield territory....
Tue, Aug 20 2019, 5:13 PM
Mortgage rates held steady today, for the most part. If there was a leaning, it was toward slightly lower rates, but not by a wide enough margin to be...
Tue, Aug 20 2019, 2:30 PM
Monday's edition of the Federal Register featured a proposed rule that, depending on your viewpoint, would amend the Department of Housing and Urban D...
Tue, Aug 20 2019, 8:59 AM
In the day just passed, we considered a rather melodramatic question ("is it over?"), which refers to the general strength in the bond market seen in ...
Tue, Aug 20 2019, 8:45 AM
Why is a 43% DTI, a line many view as “drawn in the sand,” so critical to the ability of a borrower to repay a loan? What about reserves or utility bi...
Mon, Aug 19 2019, 5:59 PM
There haven't been many market moving headlines over the past 2 days with the exception of Germany removing the veil of secrecy from its fiscal stim...
Mon, Aug 19 2019, 4:52 PM
Mortgage rates mostly held steady today , despite a move higher in broader interest rate indicators like the 10yr Treasury yield. Treasuries and mortg...
Mon, Aug 19 2019, 12:09 PM
Fannie Mae used a fair number of trade-offs in while coming up with its revised outlook for the real gross domestic product (GDP) this year. The compa...
Mon, Aug 19 2019, 9:24 AM
In the week just passed, bonds rallied to new long-term low yields before bouncing on Friday. Hong Kong protests over the weekend kicked things off o...
Mon, Aug 19 2019, 9:10 AM
Builders can’t complain too much about material prices anymore. Building materials prices rose only 0.7% in July, and are down overall year-over-year....
Fri, Aug 16 2019, 7:17 PM
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) moved one point higher this month. However, at 66, NAHB's meas...
Fri, Aug 16 2019, 7:15 PM
New home purchases are expected to be significantly higher in July according to data released by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). Its monthly B...
Fri, Aug 16 2019, 4:54 PM
Perhaps more than any other day in the past few weeks, today stood as an example of the mortgage market's ability to put up a fight when the time is...
Fri, Aug 16 2019, 3:22 PM
Things have been weird enough for mortgage rates recently that we were forced to add a " Temporary Note on Mortgage Rate Inconsistency " to our daily ...
Fri, Aug 16 2019, 11:28 AM
10yr yields rallied aggressively yesterday, and for no reason more compelling than a proverbial "snowball rally compounded by technicals and algorithm...
Fri, Aug 16 2019, 8:27 AM
Some international rates have gone through 0 percent and are now negative. The low rates and high volumes have caused lenders to focus less on long-te...
Thu, Aug 15 2019, 5:35 PM
Bonds digested the week's busiest day of economic data, by far, today. But markets in general are only interested in data that changes the economic n...
Thu, Aug 15 2019, 5:18 PM
Mortgage rates fell today as the underlying market for mortgage-backed-securities (MBS) actually did a better job of keeping pace with broader bond ma...
Thu, Aug 15 2019, 8:51 AM
Plenty of economists watch builder activity and mood swings as early indicators of future economic health. Builder confidence in the single-family 55+...
Thu, Aug 15 2019, 8:37 AM
In the day just passed, bond markets primarily reacted to overseas economic data with many of the reports in Europe coming in flat to weaker. Combine...
Thu, Aug 15 2019, 8:10 AM
The long-waited Federal Housing Administration (FHA) rule regulating condominium lending was finalized Wednesday afternoon. The Department of Housing ...
Wed, Aug 14 2019, 7:00 PM
Living under a rock has a lot of advantages: generally low housing cost, durability, no roof maintenance, and if you're strong enough, you have someth...
Wed, Aug 14 2019, 6:31 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged for many lenders today which is utterly and completely shocking given the other market developments that tend to coincid...
Wed, Aug 14 2019, 10:50 AM
In the day just passed, bonds sold off by a completely average amount in the context of recent volatility and new trading range. Motivations were abo...
Wed, Aug 14 2019, 8:58 AM
Data compiled by the American Bar Association shows that average lawyer pay has nearly doubled since 1997! Mortgage loan originators enjoy comparing t...
Wed, Aug 14 2019, 8:09 AM
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said its Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage application volume, rose 21.7 percent on a seasonally ad...
Tue, Aug 13 2019, 6:07 PM
Bonds began the day in relatively unchanged territory versus yesterday's close and soon encountered the slightly stronger CPI data (2.2 vs 2.1% for CO...
Tue, Aug 13 2019, 5:13 PM
Mortgage rates were still unchanged for many lenders as of this morning. There were even a few offering slightly lower rates compared to yesterday mor...
Tue, Aug 13 2019, 11:32 AM
Both the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) and CoreLogic issued data on recent loan performance on Tuesday. For CoreLogic the Monthly Loan Performanc...
Tue, Aug 13 2019, 9:22 AM
As we digest the news that CIT is buying Mutual of Omaha Bank , others are looking at demographics. Families moving create jobs, right? From 2017 to 2...
Tue, Aug 13 2019, 8:35 AM
In the day just passed, bonds put in their second biggest rally day of the past 3 weeks (the crazy ones) and their biggest rally day since yields bott...
Mon, Aug 12 2019, 6:00 PM
There were no significant scheduled events in the offing today. Volumes were down sharply in the bond complex as well (less than 50% of recent highs)...
Mon, Aug 12 2019, 3:24 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged to slightly higher today--a claim that utterly boggles the mind of anyone who thought they understood the relationship b...
Mon, Aug 12 2019, 3:22 PM
After years of planning, the two government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac launched their uniform mortgage-backed security (U...
Mon, Aug 12 2019, 9:30 AM
In the week just passed, bonds began to settle into a range after the sharp move lower in the previous week (driven by flaring trade tensions). This ...
Mon, Aug 12 2019, 9:19 AM
While the world is watching 0% or-.5% interest rates in Denmark , in this country Zillow is competing with lenders, real estate agents, and mom & pop ...
Fri, Aug 9 2019, 4:53 PM
I wouldn't go so far as to say this week of bond market movement went "out like a lamb," but at the very least, it wasn't nearly as brutal as the firs...
Fri, Aug 9 2019, 4:15 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower today even though the broader bond market suggested they should have remained flat or higher. In several of this week's pre...
