Wed, Jan 16 2019, 5:01 PM
Today would have been Retail Sales day were it not for the government shutdown. This also prevented Business Inventories from reporting (not an ins...
Wed, Jan 16 2019, 4:13 PM
Mortgage rates rose modestly today after spending the past 2 days moving sideways. It was really yesterday's market weakness that caused today's move....
Wed, Jan 16 2019, 11:12 AM
As pricing battles rage in the wholesale channel, there has been plenty of news of layoffs in residential lending over the last six months industry-wi...
Wed, Jan 16 2019, 10:35 AM
After falling an aggregate of 12 points in November and December the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HM...
Wed, Jan 16 2019, 8:47 AM
There will be no Retail Sales report this morning due to the government shutdown. This provides a perfect example of the issue the bond market is c...
Wed, Jan 16 2019, 8:16 AM
Somewhere in this country there are 230 homes with mortgage balances between $10 and $20 million dollars. According to a post written by Arthur Jobe i...
Wed, Jan 16 2019, 8:07 AM
January 11 ended the first full business week in a while and mortgage activity responded accordingly. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported ...
Tue, Jan 15 2019, 6:40 PM
Homeownership as an American dream is alive and well according to new data from the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) 2018 Housing Opportunities...
Tue, Jan 15 2019, 6:31 PM
The S&P had been idling in place with prices between 2560 and 2600 for more than a week. During that week, we've discussed the risks associated with ...
Tue, Jan 15 2019, 4:44 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged yet again today. Given that rates are based on trading levels in underlying bond markets, it's no surprise to learn that...
Tue, Jan 15 2019, 8:55 AM
Are rates too high given where the U.S. economy is? Traders, investors, and the Fed think they’re where they need to be, given the information we have...
Tue, Jan 15 2019, 8:39 AM
Neither side of the market (debt/bonds or stocks/equity) feels like it has enough information to move out of recent holding patterns. These sideways ...
Mon, Jan 14 2019, 4:29 PM
The overnight trading session was thinly-traded due to a holiday closure in Tokyo. Buyers outnumbered sellers until the domestic session. Promptly a...
Mon, Jan 14 2019, 3:50 PM
Mortgage rates held their ground today, keeping them in line with long-term lows achieved over the past 2 weeks. To be fair, it was the previous week ...
Mon, Jan 14 2019, 9:59 AM
At least one part of the shutdown is over as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced it has resumed its Income Verification Express Service (IVES...
Mon, Jan 14 2019, 9:55 AM
My cat Myrtle has never flown coach. She doesn’t have the same complaint I have of airline workers who don’t seem to realize that “full” means full. F...
Mon, Jan 14 2019, 8:39 AM
The government shutdown is now the longest ever, and there are a variety of interesting implications. The first is that multiple economic reports wil...
Fri, Jan 11 2019, 7:12 PM
Core CPI came in at 2.2% today. Back in 2016, this was cause for concern, but now bond markets trade like inflation isn't even a remote concern. What...
Fri, Jan 11 2019, 6:11 PM
Mortgage rates improved today, breaking a 3-day streak with effectively no change. This gets us part of the way back down to the long-term lows achiev...
Fri, Jan 11 2019, 1:42 PM
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) contains a requirement that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (C...
Fri, Jan 11 2019, 10:11 AM
Today's Consumer Price Index was one of the week's only " important " pieces of economic data. Or perhaps we should say it was one of the week's only...
Fri, Jan 11 2019, 10:11 AM
The November Mortgage Monitor from Black Knight focused largely on the shifting of the mortgage market toward purchase originations and the unexpected...
Thu, Jan 10 2019, 5:28 PM
It's hard to fault the bond market for any trading over the past several days. The data and the movement in other markets have both suggested bond ma...
Thu, Jan 10 2019, 4:50 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged again today, despite moderate weakness in underlying bond markets. Bonds are the primary ingredient used in determining ...
Thu, Jan 10 2019, 11:00 AM
Credit availability suffered an unusually large decline in December. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said its Mortgage Credit Availability Inde...
Thu, Jan 10 2019, 10:15 AM
The massive stock selling in Q3 2018 was clearly a big deal for bonds. As soon as the first wave of selling hit in stocks, bonds engaged what we refe...
Thu, Jan 10 2019, 9:27 AM
Let’s see… How much does it cost you to produce a residential loan? Pizza for the shippers, underwriter bonuses, copy paper, HP-12C batteries – it all...
Wed, Jan 9 2019, 6:55 PM
The notion of "hope" comes up quite a bit in my daily recap pieces--often because something bad is happening and we hope for it to end or because some...
Wed, Jan 9 2019, 6:29 PM
Mortgage rates held steady today, after moving higher for the past 3 days. Underlying market movement was slightly calmer than it has been in recent d...
Wed, Jan 9 2019, 12:08 PM
As home sales have slowed, attention has shifted to the subject of affordability. The combination of rising home prices and higher interest rates is b...
Wed, Jan 9 2019, 10:31 AM
While the report also looks at how the recent dip in interest rates may impact the demand for refinancing, the main theme of the November 2018 Mortgag...
Wed, Jan 9 2019, 9:28 AM
The co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines, Herb Kelleher, died last week. I mention this because I read his obituary and the article noted h...
Wed, Jan 9 2019, 9:26 AM
While there are no significant scheduled events in play this morning, the afternoon hours bring the 10yr Treasury auction and the " minutes " from t...
Wed, Jan 9 2019, 8:16 AM
Even though the week ended January 4 was shortened by the New Year's holiday mortgage application volume rebounded strongly . The Mortgage Bankers Ass...
Wed, Jan 9 2019, 8:10 AM
As the partial government shutdown continues the National Association of Realtors® contacted a sample of its members to see if the real estate market ...
Tue, Jan 8 2019, 4:36 PM
For several weeks heading into the December Fed announcement, we discussed the impressive Nov/Dec bond market rally and the fact that the Fed would li...
Tue, Jan 8 2019, 3:36 PM
Mortgage rates rose moderately for the 3rd day in a row today, bringing them to the highest levels since December 31st for the average lender. In outr...
Tue, Jan 8 2019, 11:10 AM
Some housing market analysts have found recent trends in construction, home sales, and diminishing affordability disquieting and perhaps early warning...
Tue, Jan 8 2019, 9:28 AM
In some nearby parallel dimension, the letter "f" is option in today's title. We'll have to remember this little trick the next time bonds bounce so ...
Tue, Jan 8 2019, 9:13 AM
In HELOC news, “traditional” lenders know that online lender Prosper plans to offer home equity lines of credit this year. The threats to real estate ...
Mon, Jan 7 2019, 5:32 PM
Bonds had a chance to make the big potential correction of early 2019 a 1-day affair. That would refer, of course, to last Friday's bond market wea...
Mon, Jan 7 2019, 5:08 PM
Mortgage rates were higher again today, extending a 2-day move from the lowest levels since early 2018. The size and pace of the late 2018 improvement...
Mon, Jan 7 2019, 10:51 AM
A few more Americans decided it might be a good time to buy a home in November, but boy did they change their minds in December. Fannie Mae said the n...
Mon, Jan 7 2019, 10:00 AM
Let’s start the first 5-day workweek of 2019 off with something entirely non-mortgage related, although “unintended consequences from revenue-based de...
Mon, Jan 7 2019, 9:52 AM
Will rates be able to remain in the comparatively great territory they entered last week, or does Friday's post-NFP sell-off mean we should be fear...
Fri, Jan 4 2019, 5:16 PM
Yesterday's recap headline spoke of bonds being on fire in a good way. Apparently word got out . Several party poopers arrived with buckets of wate...
Fri, Jan 4 2019, 4:42 PM
Mortgage rates hit the lowest levels in nearly a year as of yesterday afternoon. In general, they've had a one track mind for the better part of two m...
Fri, Jan 4 2019, 11:34 AM
Refinancing activity has probably held up better than expected as interest rates have risen. Refinance applications accounted for more than 40 percent...
Fri, Jan 4 2019, 9:19 AM
It's no secret that the bond market has been on a tear for more than a month. 10yr Treasury yields dropped more than 30 basis points (0.30%) in Decem...
Fri, Jan 4 2019, 9:19 AM
Some view the end of one year and the beginning of another as an artificial construct, created by human intervention. Others take careful note of what...
