Thu, Aug 2 2018, 3:55 PM
Mortgage rates fell by a modest amount today. It was fairly inconsequential in the bigger picture, but could save some prospective borrowers a few dol...
Thu, Aug 2 2018, 10:58 AM
Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government supported enterprises (GSEs) that have been in federal conservatorship for ten years this month, r...
Thu, Aug 2 2018, 9:32 AM
While recent bond market trends haven't been fun for originators, they've at least been more interesting from a market-watching standpoint. Markets t...
Thu, Aug 2 2018, 9:01 AM
When I was a young teen one of my summer jobs was working for a successful contractor in Cupertino, California at about $5 an hour. Comp has gone up s...
Wed, Aug 1 2018, 4:51 PM
It's beginning to look and sound a lot like the Springtime when bond analysts were making their calls for the year's highest 10yr yields. Guesses ran...
Wed, Aug 1 2018, 4:21 PM
Mortgage rates were slightly higher today, but not because of the Fed. Today brought a Fed policy announcement which can be quite a big deal for rates...
Wed, Aug 1 2018, 2:16 PM
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in May June indicates that the labor market has continued to strengthen and that...
Wed, Aug 1 2018, 12:17 PM
Construction spending fell unexpectedly in June. The U.S. Census said overall spending was down 1.1 percent from the May estimate to a seasonally adju...
Wed, Aug 1 2018, 9:24 AM
A steadily declining number of prospective homebuyers hope to actually buy within the next 12 months according to the second quarter National Associat...
Wed, Aug 1 2018, 9:06 AM
I imagine the Congressional kickball match is really something to watch at its summer picnic. That branch of the government has become very adept at k...
Wed, Aug 1 2018, 8:19 AM
Japanese bond traders began selling right at the start of the overnight session. There wasn't a big, new monetary policy revelation, though the move ...
Wed, Aug 1 2018, 8:10 AM
Mortgage activity declined again during the week ended July 27. The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA's) Market Composite Index, a measure of loan a...
Tue, Jul 31 2018, 5:36 PM
Today ended up being all about bond markets reacting positively to last night's Bank of Japan (BOJ) announcement. In a nutshell, they just did one ...
Tue, Jul 31 2018, 5:08 PM
Mortgage rates fell modestly today, bringing them back in line with last Friday's levels. Most of the inspiration for the improvement came from overni...
Tue, Jul 31 2018, 4:35 PM
Congress has once again snatched the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) away from its scheduled demise while setting the stage for needing to do ...
Tue, Jul 31 2018, 4:31 PM
Baby Boomers, the largest generation of Americans in history until the Millennials came along, have influenced the country since their birth and have ...
Tue, Jul 31 2018, 10:13 AM
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index put on a repeat performance for May. The index, which covers all nine U.S. census di...
Tue, Jul 31 2018, 9:48 AM
Over the past 2 weeks, there has been quite a lot of speculation on the effects of Japanese monetary policy communications on US Treasuries. I've m...
Tue, Jul 31 2018, 8:56 AM
When I was in my 20s and into my 30s, I think I had about $3,000 in my retirement account - hardly enough now to even pay for the line-caught salmon f...
Mon, Jul 30 2018, 6:03 PM
For a week with so much on the calendar and so much at stake, today got things off to a fairly slow start. That's not entirely surprising, given th...
Mon, Jul 30 2018, 4:48 PM
Mortgage rates edged higher today, keeping alive a trend toward higher rates that began just over a week ago. While the overall amount of ground cover...
Mon, Jul 30 2018, 10:21 AM
Pending home sales rose marginally again in June, beating the National Association of Realtors® (NAR's) Pending Home Sale Index (PHSI) for the previou...
Mon, Jul 30 2018, 9:54 AM
This week is rare in terms of the combination of economic data, events, and other relevant goings-on. If someone asked me to rattle off a few of the ...
Mon, Jul 30 2018, 8:54 AM
“Buy land – they’re not making any more of it.” Don’t tell that to Hawai’i. While California continues to burn, 2,400 miles to the southwest Hawai’i h...
Fri, Jul 27 2018, 7:28 PM
The consensus for today's GDP reading among forecasters was for a big increase to 4.1% or 4.2% depending on who does your data aggregation. Either wa...
Fri, Jul 27 2018, 6:56 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged today, making for an anticlimactic end to a week that saw the sharpest rise in months. The lack of movement was all the ...
Fri, Jul 27 2018, 10:03 AM
Freddie Mac reported today that its total mortgage portfolio increased at an annualized rate of 3.8 percent in June. The portfolio balance at the end ...
Fri, Jul 27 2018, 9:49 AM
GDP is already out this morning and it it's left bonds in slightly stronger territory. With these gains, the longer-term chart looks like 10s might ...
Fri, Jul 27 2018, 8:59 AM
I received a note yesterday from the CEO of a well-known lender. “Rob, I love it when our competitors, who are losing money, wait weeks or months, aft...
Thu, Jul 26 2018, 6:33 PM
Bonds were paralyzed during the overnight session--both in terms of outright trading levels and the yield curve. It could have been the ECB announc...
Thu, Jul 26 2018, 3:52 PM
The homeownership rate remained essentially unchanged in the second quarter of 2018. The Census Bureau said the rate rose 0.1 percentage points compar...
Thu, Jul 26 2018, 8:57 AM
The United States is a fine country, and the residential lending industry is filled with fine individuals working to help borrowers, or help others he...
Thu, Jul 26 2018, 8:30 AM
I thought about making the headline something that pertained specifically to today's events. "Draghi, Durables, and Week's Last Treasury Auction" wou...
Wed, Jul 25 2018, 5:24 PM
Bonds began the day in modestly stronger territory and seemed content to hand onto those gains indefinitely. Up until the last 90 minutes of tradin...
Wed, Jul 25 2018, 4:57 PM
Mortgage rates began the day in a fairly hopeful way. Underlying bond markets were just slightly stronger and a few lenders offered modest improvement...
Wed, Jul 25 2018, 10:38 AM
New home sales have adopted an up and down pattern since March and continued in that trend in June. The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housi...
Wed, Jul 25 2018, 9:45 AM
Yesterday brought an early interruption to the range breakout that began late last week. Such bounces merit caution as they often simply act as a sh...
Wed, Jul 25 2018, 9:05 AM
“Rob, are you hearing that residential lenders are nervous about releasing their 2nd quarter results to warehouse banks, correspondent investors, and ...
Wed, Jul 25 2018, 8:03 AM
As the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) termed it the headline on its press release this morning: "Mortgage Application Activity and Rates [were] Ne...
Tue, Jul 24 2018, 6:15 PM
Today was one of those eerily calm days that we occasionally see plopped right where we'd expect to see something more exciting. And in a way, that i...
Tue, Jul 24 2018, 5:26 PM
Mortgage rates rose again today, even though underlying bond markets managed to indicate modest improvements. There are two reasons rates ignored thos...
Tue, Jul 24 2018, 11:09 AM
The rate of home price appreciation appears to be accelerating again , at least for those homes purchased using Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgages. T...
Tue, Jul 24 2018, 10:08 AM
The old credit score models are safe for the time being, despite a belief that they disregard millions of creditworthy Americans, leaving them unable ...
Tue, Jul 24 2018, 9:18 AM
In putting together today's chart, I found my fingers involuntarily typing the phrase "post-range-bound momentum spike." It made perfect sense in m...
Tue, Jul 24 2018, 8:55 AM
Not to sound too preachy, but I bet it would have a noticeable impact on the environment if the hundreds of thousands of folks in residential lending ...
Tue, Jul 24 2018, 8:06 AM
Mortgage performance seems to be sliding past the metrics measuring the world prior to the 2008 housing crisis and is now setting new benchmarks for t...
Mon, Jul 23 2018, 4:30 PM
Super narrow consolidation patterns in bonds are always super boring until they're not. It looked like things may have been getting exciting as ear...
Mon, Jul 23 2018, 3:53 PM
Mortgage rates rose today at the quickest pace in months, ultimately hitting the highest levels since June 25th for the average lender. While neither ...
Mon, Jul 23 2018, 12:11 PM
While official existing home sales data, released this morning by the National Association of Realtors® (NAR), showed the sector's losing streak exten...
Mon, Jul 23 2018, 10:59 AM
Existing home sales extended their losing streak to three months in June. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said that single-family homes, t...
