Fri, Apr 13 2018, 3:52 PM
Mortgage rates were slightly higher for most lenders today even though underlying bond markets suggested the opposite. This is partly a timing issue. ...
Fri, Apr 13 2018, 11:23 AM
If they had a report card, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) would have been afraid to take it home to mom and dad. Laura S. Wertheimer, FHFA'...
Fri, Apr 13 2018, 9:56 AM
I started using some more serious words to talk about bond market weakness yesterday, but I'll make them simple and keep the assessment short this mor...
Fri, Apr 13 2018, 9:16 AM
“Rob, are you hearing of companies where branches are being picked off due to new budgetary constraints, and where new recruiting has become problemat...
Thu, Apr 12 2018, 7:49 PM
At first glance, today was all about a de-escalation of yesterday's Syria rhetoric from Trump (re: "missiles"). Given that we were able to credit yes...
Thu, Apr 12 2018, 6:29 PM
A day after hitting the lowest levels in more than 2 months, mortgage rates bounced back up today. The good news is that they didn't land too far from...
Thu, Apr 12 2018, 12:20 PM
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is predicting a strong increase in new home sales in March. Its Builder Application Survey (BAS), conducted wit...
Thu, Apr 12 2018, 11:17 AM
As Americans are nearing the deadline to file their 2017 federal income tax return, what this will put on their 2018 return is still open to debate. T...
Thu, Apr 12 2018, 9:32 AM
On a week where the calendar of events had every right to push bond yields more decisively away from their most important recent technical level (2.79...
Thu, Apr 12 2018, 9:11 AM
This commentary posts plenty of job opportunities. I have a site – www.LenderNews.com – where folks can post resumes for free (under “services) and co...
Wed, Apr 11 2018, 6:37 PM
Bonds were set to begin the day in fairly unchanged territory when Trump tweeted about launching missiles at Syria and forcing Russia to try to shoot ...
Wed, Apr 11 2018, 3:16 PM
Mortgage rates technically hit the lowest levels in 2 months today. The catch is that they were already pretty close and that today's improvement wasn...
Wed, Apr 11 2018, 11:17 AM
Can the past be reliably expected to predict the future? Probably not if one is talking about consumer behavior and structural breaks in the housing c...
Wed, Apr 11 2018, 9:06 AM
Here’s some trivia for Happy Hour tonight. Who is Irene Triplett? Triplett is the sole surviving person sole surviving person to be receiving a Civil ...
Wed, Apr 11 2018, 8:56 AM
Multifamily mortgage financing was the big winner overall in what was a record setting year for commercial and multifamily originations. The Mortgage ...
Wed, Apr 11 2018, 8:53 AM
Mortgage applications, both for home purchases and refinancing, declined for the second consecutive week during the period ending April 6. The Mortgag...
Wed, Apr 11 2018, 8:30 AM
Bonds were flat yet again in the overnight session, but began to improve after Trump tweeted "get ready Russia," missiles "will be coming" in respon...
Tue, Apr 10 2018, 6:17 PM
For bonds (and almost for S&P futures as well), today was spent in roughly the same range as yesterday and well-within the range boundaries set by Fri...
Tue, Apr 10 2018, 4:21 PM
Mortgage rates were roughly unchanged again today. Some lenders were slightly higher in rate, but not enough to affect the average. Underlying bond ma...
Tue, Apr 10 2018, 11:15 AM
In the company's loan performance report for January, Frank Martell, CoreLogic's president and CEO said, "Except for the metropolitan areas affected b...
Tue, Apr 10 2018, 9:19 AM
Although today's 8:30am data has the trigger phrase "price index," it's not the price index you're looking for. That will come tomorrow in the form o...
Tue, Apr 10 2018, 9:08 AM
Plenty of folks are moving to Florida, where I am today for a VA Conference. Do property taxes matter? Sure they do. Enough to move to an entirely dif...
Mon, Apr 9 2018, 5:04 PM
Without any major events or data on the econ calendar, it was a calm and relatively inconsequential day for bond markets. Yields stayed (mostly) in...
Mon, Apr 9 2018, 4:40 PM
Mortgage rates were steady to slightly higher to begin the new week, depending on the lender. Even in cases where rates rose, the increase was modest ...
Mon, Apr 9 2018, 12:12 PM
If you think the stock market has been volatile, you might consider a dose of Dramamine before checking out Fannie Mae's Home Purchase Sentiment Index...
Mon, Apr 9 2018, 9:34 AM
If you're a 10yr Treasury yield in 2018, you don't simply have free reign to enjoy yourself at yields under 2.80%. That's a right and a privilege for...
Mon, Apr 9 2018, 9:14 AM
What’s the retail residential competition up to? Eave (not to be confused with Eaze !) launched a new software that automates mortgage applications an...
Fri, Apr 6 2018, 5:16 PM
It would be hard to have any discussion about important technical levels in 10yr Treasury yields recently without 2.79-2.80% coming up early and often...
Fri, Apr 6 2018, 4:49 PM
Mortgage rates moved back down to yesterday's levels after a much weaker read on job creation from the Labor Department. In general, weak economic dat...
Fri, Apr 6 2018, 9:34 AM
NFP came out much weaker this morning (102k vs 190k forecast). That's a fairly weak reading, and a bigger "miss" than we normally see. Importantly t...
Fri, Apr 6 2018, 9:18 AM
What happens when you combine an already tight housing market, marijuana, a Chinese crime syndicate, and the U.S. government? The answer is not a movi...
Thu, Apr 5 2018, 4:42 PM
I'm running out of ways to talk about trade-war-related headlines driving risk-on vs risk-off movement in stocks and bonds. In case you've missed i...
Thu, Apr 5 2018, 4:22 PM
Mortgage rates moved slightly higher today as trade war fears waned for financial markets. There's not a direct connection between trade issues and mo...
Thu, Apr 5 2018, 11:03 AM
Mortgage credit access tightened for the second straight month in March. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said its Mortgage Credit Availability ...
Thu, Apr 5 2018, 9:17 AM
Along with a declining rate of homeownership, analysts have noted over the last few years that fewer Americans appear to be heavily invested in the dr...
Thu, Apr 5 2018, 9:13 AM
My father was in the U.S. Navy for 20 years (1942-1962) and his first home loan in 1967 was a VA 30-year fixed rate mortgage. That was obviously pre-i...
Thu, Apr 5 2018, 9:07 AM
The month of March was characterized by 10yr yields repeatedly bouncing at a floor of 2.80% in terms of 10yr yields. At the time, I argued that--whil...
Wed, Apr 4 2018, 4:18 PM
On a few occasions during the past few weeks, I've brought MBS underperformance to your attention. Specifically, MBS and mortgage rates hadn't been...
Wed, Apr 4 2018, 3:56 PM
Mortgage rates were sideways to slightly lower today, depending on the lender. That presents something of an opportunity because underlying bond marke...
Wed, Apr 4 2018, 9:57 AM
Although preliminary news was out yesterday about China potentially announcing retaliatory tariffs on the US, that announcement was officially made ov...
Wed, Apr 4 2018, 9:26 AM
The strong showing for both refinancing and purchase applications during the week ended March 23 didn't last, with both reversing course last week. Th...
Wed, Apr 4 2018, 9:14 AM
As residential origination volumes and margins contract, plenty of lenders are looking at construction, non-QM, bond, government, ARM, SBA, and USDA l...
Tue, Apr 3 2018, 4:18 PM
Granted, it's an on-again, off-again relationship between stock prices and rates, but it's been "on" for the past few days. Today was no exception....
Tue, Apr 3 2018, 4:17 PM
Mortgage rates didn't move much today, on average, even though underlying bond markets suggested a move higher. We talked about the stock/bond relatio...
Tue, Apr 3 2018, 1:01 PM
The Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) presented the Bureaus semi-annual report to Congress on Monday. The report, whi...
Tue, Apr 3 2018, 12:43 PM
February looks as though it may be yet another month when the long-predicted end to rising rates of home appreciation was supposed to happen and didn'...
Tue, Apr 3 2018, 9:54 AM
The amount of equity available for tapping by homeowners hit a new recent high in February . Meanwhile, mortgage prepayment rates (how quickly owners ...
Tue, Apr 3 2018, 9:13 AM
If anyone ever asks you, the average parking space is 180 square feet, which works out to 242 parking spaces per acre. Reuters reports that, due to Vo...
Tue, Apr 3 2018, 9:05 AM
Yesterday's recap focused on the on-again, off-again relationship between stocks and bonds. Specifically, bonds don't always follow stocks or vice ve...
Mon, Apr 2 2018, 5:20 PM
One of my favorite recurring observations about financial markets is that the classic concept of "stocks vs bonds" doesn't always work. That's the on...
