Wed, Mar 13 2019, 9:52 AM
Yesterday saw bonds tag their best levels since early January (Jan 3rd was the only day in over a year where yields closed any lower) on a combination...
Wed, Mar 13 2019, 9:12 AM
Builders, appraisers, & real estate agents love to talk about square feet. Houses are becoming larger as households have become smaller. Right now, th...
Wed, Mar 13 2019, 8:19 AM
Overall mortgage application activity resumed an upward trend last week, with another strong showing for purchase volume. The Mortgage Bankers Associa...
Tue, Mar 12 2019, 4:18 PM
There were three salient market movers for the bond market today with one of them being a 2-parter.
First up was Brexit news in the overnight sess...
Tue, Mar 12 2019, 3:52 PM
Mortgage rates dropped convincingly today, bringing them to new long-term lows. The average lender hasn't offered anything lower for more than a year ...
Tue, Mar 12 2019, 1:32 PM
Increasing home prices have the additional benefit of reducing mortgage foreclosures according to CoreLogic. The company's Loan Performance Insights r...
Tue, Mar 12 2019, 10:33 AM
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) have each issued birth announcements for their long-anticipated Uniform Mortgage-Backed Securities (UMBS). The t...
Tue, Mar 12 2019, 9:48 AM
Just as yesterday's domestic trading hours ended, British Prime Minister Theresa May met with EU leaders to try to tweak the Brexit proposal enough to...
Tue, Mar 12 2019, 8:41 AM
This morning I’m feeling old after a 3AM wake up call to travel from Ellie Mae’s conference in San Francisco to the MBAKY in Louisville. (Speaking of ...
Mon, Mar 11 2019, 4:38 PM
Today brought the Retail Sales report, which was responsible for a fairly big reaction the last time it came out. This time around, the reaction was ...
Mon, Mar 11 2019, 3:59 PM
Mortgage rates were roughly unchanged to begin the week. That means they are staying in line with the lowest levels in more than a year. Only 2 or 3 d...
Mon, Mar 11 2019, 9:48 AM
Stop me if you've heard this one before. There's this range in early 2019... It was consolidating. Then it broke. Now it's sideways.
Unless you'...
Mon, Mar 11 2019, 8:52 AM
How do you pay your bills? (Do you pay your bills?) Cash? Check? Automatic debit? There is a myriad of ways that borrowers remit their mortgage paymen...
Fri, Mar 8 2019, 4:14 PM
From bumpy ride to smooth sailing: bonds gained more ground this week than they lost during last week's range-breaking sell-off. I firmly believe tha...
Fri, Mar 8 2019, 3:50 PM
Yesterday, we talked about how mortgage rates were actually lower this week, despite some news coverage to the contrary, and how that discrepancy was ...
Fri, Mar 8 2019, 12:35 PM
Permits rose in January, but the headline for the delayed residential construction report from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing an...
Fri, Mar 8 2019, 10:48 AM
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has taken a look at the differences between homes constructed within metropolitan statistical areas (...
Fri, Mar 8 2019, 9:35 AM
Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes. In today's case, the fiction is the fairly logical story most traders would write in their minds. That sto...
Fri, Mar 8 2019, 9:04 AM
Catsup or Ketchup? Language is fascinating. The mortgage biz is filled with acronyms, and the last time I counted there were over 850 commonly used ab...
Thu, Mar 7 2019, 4:53 PM
Mortgage rates dropped noticeably today, as the underlying bond market benefited from overseas developments. The European Central Bank (ECB) is Europe...
Thu, Mar 7 2019, 4:47 PM
Today was all about the European Central Bank's surprisingly bond-friendly announcement and press conference. Considering markets already expected ...
Thu, Mar 7 2019, 12:50 PM
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said its Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI) rose slightly in February. The Index, which measures any tig...
Thu, Mar 7 2019, 11:37 AM
While homeowner equity increased overall during the fourth quarter of 2018, the number of homeowners with negative equity rose for the first time in 1...
Thu, Mar 7 2019, 10:16 AM
Earlier this week CoreLogic reported that the annual rate of appreciation in January, 4.2 percent, was exactly two-thirds the rate in January 2018. Th...
Thu, Mar 7 2019, 10:04 AM
Fannie Mae's Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI), a measure derived from the company's monthly National Housing Survey (NHS), was essentially unchang...
Thu, Mar 7 2019, 9:37 AM
“Rob, one of my LOs was heard about a program that offers 97% 1st with no MI and up to a 105% CLTV with a community 2nd, when approved for the 1st, th...
Thu, Mar 7 2019, 9:25 AM
Bonds have had a good thing going so far in 2019. Various geopolitical uncertainties combined with the prospect of downbeat economic growth in Q1 and...
Wed, Mar 6 2019, 5:01 PM
At first glance, this morning's ADP Employment data may have been cause for bond market concern. It wasn't that the headline was much higher than exp...
Wed, Mar 6 2019, 4:42 PM
Mortgage rates improved again today, bringing them back to the lowest levels seen since last Thursday morning. Starting last Wednesday, we saw a fairl...
Wed, Mar 6 2019, 10:31 AM
If you're a frequent reader, you're likely tired of hearing about "the range." Such is life when bonds are range-bound, but that doesn't mean we can'...
Wed, Mar 6 2019, 9:39 AM
As most of us gird our loins for “springing ahead” this weekend, it is important to remember that U.S. citizens are, in general, a giving people. Than...
Wed, Mar 6 2019, 8:14 AM
An uptick in mortgage rates was blamed by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) for the first decline in mortgage applications in three weeks. MBA's ...
Tue, Mar 5 2019, 7:27 PM
The bond market was already in the process of holding ground in the overnight session and domestic trading hours only added to the resilience. It may...
Tue, Mar 5 2019, 4:55 PM
After a pretty rough conclusion last week, yesterday's stability was a welcome change for mortgage rates at the start of the new week. Today made thin...
Tue, Mar 5 2019, 11:51 AM
It is our first glance at home prices in the new year and CoreLogic estimates the rate of appreciation has fallen by more than 2 percentage points sin...
Tue, Mar 5 2019, 10:45 AM
Analysts were not expecting new home sales in December to outpace the strong and surprising gains they made in November, when they jumped 16.9 percent...
Tue, Mar 5 2019, 9:10 AM
It may seem a bit counter-intuitive to be talking up economic data in light of last week's bond sell-off. Friday saw weaker-than-expected consumer sp...
Tue, Mar 5 2019, 8:44 AM
Equal pay rates and equality for men and women in the U.S.? Nope – our world ranking isn’t so hot. Turns out, however, that the construction industry ...
Mon, Mar 4 2019, 4:14 PM
As we watched bond markets sell-off abruptly last week, the best case scenario would have been that the selling was overdone and that we would soon be...
Mon, Mar 4 2019, 3:40 PM
Mortgage rates finally caught their breath today after rising quickly in the second half of last week. Specifically, the average lender managed to avo...
Mon, Mar 4 2019, 11:43 AM
The Census Bureau, still playing catch-up from the partial government shutdown , has released its monthly construction spending report for December 20...
Mon, Mar 4 2019, 9:38 AM
As the nation watches the terrible tornado-related events and casualties in Alabama, and sympathizes with those impacted, the rebuilding has already c...
Mon, Mar 4 2019, 9:22 AM
2019 had been (and perhaps continues to be) dominated by an increasingly narrow range. To appreciate just how narrow things have been, consider the m...
Fri, Mar 1 2019, 5:04 PM
Heading into today, if you were hoping to see rates move lower, it would have made sense to hope for economic data to come in weaker than expected. T...
Fri, Mar 1 2019, 4:15 PM
Mortgage rates surged again today as the underlying bond market continued to capitulate to selling pressure. Let's talk about what that means in plain...
Fri, Mar 1 2019, 11:51 AM
I like economists and math PhD.’s but there is some truth that “experts” have picked 8 of the last 4 recessions. While the U.S. economy is considered ...
Fri, Mar 1 2019, 10:06 AM
Freddie Mac's economists see low interest rates continuing, at least through the end of next year . The company's Economic and Strategic Research Grou...
Fri, Mar 1 2019, 9:26 AM
The long-standing consolidation range in 10yr Treasury yields finally came under serious attack yesterday, with a big breakout to the upside. Any tim...
Thu, Feb 28 2019, 7:14 PM
GDP doesn't usually move markets as clearly as it did today, but today was a bit of an anomaly. First off, we'd been waiting for this revision longer...
Thu, Feb 28 2019, 6:24 PM
The Census Bureau reported on Thursday that the national homeownership rate rose slightly in the fourth quarter of 2018 to 64.8 percent , up from 64.4...
