Thu, Jan 3 2019, 5:08 PM
Bonds hit their best levels in nearly a year today, depending on the security in question. MBS are lagging behind Treasuries for reasons discussed in...
Thu, Jan 3 2019, 4:37 PM
Mortgage rates have been plummeting , depending on your definition of the word. To be sure, the past 2 months have no competition in nearly 3 years. T...
Thu, Jan 3 2019, 9:53 AM
Bonds started the new year off on a strong note yesterday, rallying to the best levels since ____. That blank would be filled in with a distinctly di...
Thu, Jan 3 2019, 9:31 AM
According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR, not the NRA), Americans 36 and younger represented the largest share of home buyers (34%) in 2...
Thu, Jan 3 2019, 8:21 AM
Earlier this week we summarized a new White Paper from Freddie Mae detailing the growing importance of single-family properties within the U.S. rental...
Thu, Jan 3 2019, 8:05 AM
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) office was closed during Christmas Week and did not issue its usual summary of mortgage application activity fo...
Wed, Jan 2 2019, 5:55 PM
Monday's half-day brought 2018 to a strongly positive conclusion for bonds. Today's full session picked up where Monday left off and then some . ...
Wed, Jan 2 2019, 4:49 PM
Mortgage rates didn't have much to celebrate in 2018--at least not until the last few months. But those last few months were quite nice! Despite uncer...
Wed, Jan 2 2019, 10:40 AM
Home prices grew by an estimated 0.4 percent in November according to CoreLogic's Home Price Index (HPI) and were 5.1 percent higher than at the end o...
Wed, Jan 2 2019, 8:49 AM
Last week I noted a STRATMOR study that shows, pretty much year in and year out, that traditionally, 82% of residential production comes from 40% of t...
Wed, Jan 2 2019, 8:31 AM
Overnight market movement was kind to the US bond market, keeping some hope alive for a continuation of recent strength. Rather than an epic rebound ...
Mon, Dec 31 2018, 2:30 PM
When one thinks about renters it is usually clusters of three-story garden style apartments, or high-rise elevator buildings that come to mind. But Fr...
Mon, Dec 31 2018, 2:05 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower again today--this time in a slightly more noticeable way. More than anything, this was a reflection of last Friday's market...
Mon, Dec 31 2018, 9:40 AM
This week promises a slow start due to the early close today and full closure tomorrow, but a strong finish due to Friday's NFP and the simple fact ...
Mon, Dec 31 2018, 8:54 AM
How important is it for lock desk personnel to charge the correct fees for rate lock extensions? Very. Lock mistakes were included in Wells Fargo’s la...
Fri, Dec 28 2018, 4:55 PM
Bonds have had their good eye on stocks for months now. Almost any instance of exceptional bond market strength has come courtesy of exceptional ...
Fri, Dec 28 2018, 4:27 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower by an almost imperceptible amount today. The improvement was enough to bring the average lender to the lowest levels since ...
Fri, Dec 28 2018, 10:29 AM
Analysts had expected to hear that pending home sales had a good run in November, perhaps even breaking its 10-month streak of year-over-year declines...
Fri, Dec 28 2018, 9:31 AM
“Rob, should we be staffing up for another refi boom?” It seems like most lenders are pausing during the holidays to take stock of current staffing le...
Fri, Dec 28 2018, 9:17 AM
As we discuss off and on over the years, the relationship between stocks and bonds is always complicated. At times, it seems as if bond yields and st...
Thu, Dec 27 2018, 5:16 PM
Is this the "big one" or isn't it?! That's what everyone with a vested interested in the stock market would like to know about the ongoing sell-off t...
Thu, Dec 27 2018, 4:48 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged to slightly lower today, which is a major victory considering how yesterday left off. Specifically, bond markets had wea...
Thu, Dec 27 2018, 10:06 AM
Home prices on the Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA's) Housing Price Index (HPI) crept higher in October, although year over year appreciation s...
Thu, Dec 27 2018, 9:10 AM
Last Wednesday was Fed day and it marked a technical breakout for bond yields. As far back as June 2018, 10yr yields had been bouncing on a floor of ...
Thu, Dec 27 2018, 8:54 AM
The US taxpayer has been bearing the credit risk of 90% of all new origination over the past 10 years. What about property/collateral risk? Yesterday ...
Wed, Dec 26 2018, 4:47 PM
Bonds had a rotten day, primarily because stocks had an amazing day (although the terrible 5yr Treasury auction didn't help). In turn, stocks prima...
Wed, Dec 26 2018, 4:10 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged in some cases today and higher in others. The discrepancy is a result of the timing of today's market movements. The mos...
Wed, Dec 26 2018, 10:59 AM
Home prices continued to ratchet down their advances in October, fewer than half of the tracked cities saw prices increase on an unadjusted basis. The...
Wed, Dec 26 2018, 10:04 AM
The title of the Day Ahead commentary on Monday was "Don't Get Too Attached." In a nutshell, the suggestion was to not get too attached to any decisi...
Wed, Dec 26 2018, 8:54 AM
This government shutdown is over 215 miles of fencing along a 2,000-mile border. Rate-wise, there is growing thought that the Fed has overshot rate ch...
Mon, Dec 24 2018, 12:43 PM
Mortgage rates did nothing interesting today, as is typical for the days before and after a major holiday. Tangentially related and significantly more...
Mon, Dec 24 2018, 10:19 AM
Freddie Mac reported this week that its total mortgage portfolio increased at an annualized rate of 6.8 percent in November, up from 4.7 percent the p...
Mon, Dec 24 2018, 9:31 AM
The week and a half surrounding Christmas and New Years Day tends to play by its own random rules. Sometimes it fits in with the prevailing trend (in...
Mon, Dec 24 2018, 9:03 AM
I’ve been in capital markets since the mid-1980s. No presidential administration has eliminated business cycles. Although stocks have given up their g...
Fri, Dec 21 2018, 4:35 PM
After quite a bit of stock/bond correlation in the run up to the Fed announcement (and in the few hours that followed), the two sides of the market ...
Fri, Dec 21 2018, 3:59 PM
Mortgage rates were steady to slightly higher yet again today. This reinforces our sense from yesterday that rates may have already found their post-F...
Fri, Dec 21 2018, 12:50 PM
Households headed by self-employed persons make up about one-tenth of all households and have a median income higher than those headed by salaried per...
Fri, Dec 21 2018, 9:06 AM
Welcome to the Winter Solstice with more daylight in the Northern Hemisphere every day for the next six months. Today is definitely greeted by residen...
Fri, Dec 21 2018, 8:35 AM
One of the biggest surprises I encountered as I've learned about bond markets (and financial markets in general) over the years is just how big a ro...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 5:23 PM
Stocks and bonds haven't necessarily been joined at the hip for every moment of every day recently, but there's been enough correlation to make today'...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 4:48 PM
Mortgage rates were steady to slightly higher today. As such, they remain quite close to their lowest levels in roughly 4 months--a distinction achiev...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 12:01 PM
You can cut the numbers in several ways, but no matter the way it is reported, American households are in relatively good shape when it comes to mortg...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 10:13 AM
It is still a tiny share, but Ellie Mae says, in its November Origination Insight Report that the percentage of adjustable rate mortgages (ARMS) origi...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 10:11 AM
The 2019 goals for the GSE conservatorship are a good deal more general than those put forward on the yearly Scorecard from the Federal Housing Financ...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 9:06 AM
All kinds of things are being found. A woman in Missouri’s tiny house ” was found after being stolen. Then New York Times found more money to pay its ...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 9:03 AM
When bonds have been in a relatively strong trend for better or worse heading into the 3rd week of December, we tend to see a consolidation or a conti...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 8:24 AM
Mortgage prepayment activity reached a 10-year low in November. Black Knight said, in its "first look" at the months mortgage data, that the character...
Wed, Dec 19 2018, 4:58 PM
The Fed had a chance to soothe the stock market today by doing "something dovish" with respect to monetary policy or even forward guidance. "Someth...
Wed, Dec 19 2018, 4:40 PM
After a prolonged losing streak - existing home sales hadn't seen an increase since March - the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) announced a se...
Wed, Dec 19 2018, 4:26 PM
Mortgage rates fell today even though the Fed "raised rates." What's up with that? There are all kinds of rates. Some are fixed. Some are adjustable. ...
