Mon, Oct 30 2017, 9:35 AM
While home prices set yet another national peak in August, the change from July was the second smallest of the year, at least as measured by Black Kni...
Mon, Oct 30 2017, 9:19 AM
I, for one, have no interest in buying shoes online without trying them on first. The same with a mattress – I want to lie on it myself. (Lay? Lie?) I...
Mon, Oct 30 2017, 9:14 AM
Wednesday brings this year's 2nd to last installment of Fed policy announcements, and those announcements have certainly been ramping up in terms of s...
Fri, Oct 27 2017, 6:44 PM
If nothing else, today made it clear that markets care about the next Fed chair... a lot! Despite the presence of GDP data, Consumer Sentiment, and...
Fri, Oct 27 2017, 3:11 PM
Mortgage rates recovered some of their recent losses today, with most lenders moving back into Wednesday's territory. The improvement followed another...
Fri, Oct 27 2017, 9:22 AM
The average age of a loan officer is 73. Okay, just kidding. But as anyone in the lending industry and others age, they begin to worry about things su...
Fri, Oct 27 2017, 9:02 AM
Yesterday afternoon's MBS Recap is a good read if you want a longer and more philosophical version of what I'm about to write (click the link to read ...
Thu, Oct 26 2017, 7:13 PM
If you haven't seen Zoolander, you won't be familiar with Billy Zane declaring "It's a walk-off," thus beginning the runway modeling battle between Be...
Thu, Oct 26 2017, 5:22 PM
Mortgage rates are in a bit of trouble, having moved higher at the fastest pace since late June in the past few days. If you've had occasion to read a...
Thu, Oct 26 2017, 12:49 PM
In August, MND published a summary of an analysis of the current state of the adjustable rate mortgage (ARM). CoreLogic's senior professional economis...
Thu, Oct 26 2017, 10:32 AM
We called the August pending home sales report "the gloomiest in some time." The best that can be said about the report released this morning for Sept...
Thu, Oct 26 2017, 9:19 AM
NAR wrote a white paper detailing the barriers to homeownership and many of the reasons are well-known. Of course, real estate agents wish there were ...
Thu, Oct 26 2017, 8:34 AM
As today begins, the objective details of the ECB policy move are already out. With the exception the percent change in the € amount of bond purcha...
Wed, Oct 25 2017, 6:11 PM
Yesterday’s commentary noted that HUD Secretary Ben Carson “turned some heads by suggesting lower potential penalties for lenders, especially those fi...
Wed, Oct 25 2017, 6:06 PM
I saw an article from someone who typically does solid work claiming that the massive sell-off in stocks today was due to rising rates. Fortunately, ...
Wed, Oct 25 2017, 3:44 PM
Mortgage rates continued higher at a relatively fast pace today, pushing farther into the highest levels since early July. As of this afternoon, the a...
Wed, Oct 25 2017, 2:00 PM
David H. Stevens, president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) has announced his retirement. Stevens, who has led MBA since 2011, has a...
Wed, Oct 25 2017, 10:40 AM
Analysts had predicted new home sales number would retreat again in September, on the heels of a 9.4 percent loss in August. Whoops! September's resul...
Wed, Oct 25 2017, 9:55 AM
Most forecasts at the end of 2016 called for a gradual slowdown in the pace of home price appreciation. Depending upon whom you asked, growth was supp...
Wed, Oct 25 2017, 9:49 AM
We'll get to the good news in a moment. Bad news is obviously the order of the day as bonds are starting out with a big break through important tec...
Wed, Oct 25 2017, 9:08 AM
The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA's) Market Composite Index, a measure of overall mortgage application volume, ended a four week slide during th...
Tue, Oct 24 2017, 7:17 PM
Yesterday's recap suggested the week had yet to officially begin and that Monday's trading session had been more of an unofficial 3rd day of the weeke...
Tue, Oct 24 2017, 6:30 PM
Like both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA's) is anticipating that mortgage originations in 2018 will not match up to...
Tue, Oct 24 2017, 5:10 PM
Mortgage rates jumped abruptly higher today for many lenders after reports of an informal show of hands in favor of John Taylor as Trump's potential F...
Tue, Oct 24 2017, 10:21 AM
The number of affordable rental units available to low and very low-income households is falling according to a new analysis from Freddie Mac. Not onl...
Tue, Oct 24 2017, 9:44 AM
We talked about yesterday being an unofficial 3rd day of the weekend in that trading volumes were light and the trading activity lacked conviction. T...
Tue, Oct 24 2017, 9:23 AM
We don’t eat plain ol’ “bacon” anymore. It is usually “Applewood smoked bacon.” Given the amount of Applewood smoked bacon lenders seem to consume at ...
Mon, Oct 23 2017, 6:02 PM
Like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac's economists are viewing the disruptions from the recent hurricanes as short-lived . The 33,000-job loss in September, fo...
Mon, Oct 23 2017, 5:57 PM
It has been a tumultuous and unpredictable year. That was how David H. Stevens, President and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association framed his remar...
Mon, Oct 23 2017, 5:42 PM
I refer to some Mondays as unofficial 3rd days of the weekend, and today's example qualifies. There were no significant economic reports, no substant...
Mon, Oct 23 2017, 3:50 PM
Mortgage rates were generally unchanged today despite slight improvements in underlying bond markets. As of last Friday, the average lender was quotin...
Mon, Oct 23 2017, 9:26 AM
The undisputed hit of the conference so far in Denver? The MBA’s mPower event on Saturday. Yes, it eliminated "a Saturday off" for over 300 women, but...
Mon, Oct 23 2017, 8:56 AM
While there are certainly some weeks with far fewer economic reports on tap, the week ahead is still on the light side when it comes to the data that ...
Fri, Oct 20 2017, 6:53 PM
There's a good video in the news stream with Austan Goolsbee going on a bit of rant about how the Senate's procedural vote on a budget resolution late...
Fri, Oct 20 2017, 6:26 PM
Mortgage rates moved higher today as financial markets grew more optimistic about the potential for tax reform. Late last night, the Senate passed a r...
Fri, Oct 20 2017, 12:49 PM
While it sometimes seems as though Americans live online, there is still apparently one area where they still value human contact. A recent survey con...
Fri, Oct 20 2017, 10:53 AM
It was only a small gain , albeit larger than analysts expected, but after three straight months of sliding sales, the existing home sales report for ...
Fri, Oct 20 2017, 9:39 AM
Refinancing increased its share of total originations in September, rising 3 percentage points from August to 38 percent of all closed loans. Ellie Ma...
Fri, Oct 20 2017, 9:38 AM
It's a crappy day.
Sorry to use such an esoteric analytical term, but it's the most accurate way to describe the outlook. So what changed?
Lo...
Fri, Oct 20 2017, 9:38 AM
Not only are houses becoming smaller, but the lots are smaller also. Trulia tells us that houses built since 2015 occupy, on average, 25 percent of th...
Thu, Oct 19 2017, 5:11 PM
It was a pretty interesting session for how narrow the range continues to be in bond markets--interesting both for bonds themselves and for the analys...
Thu, Oct 19 2017, 4:10 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged to slightly lower today. Political drama in Europe pushed stocks lower overnight and sent investors toward safer haven a...
Thu, Oct 19 2017, 2:59 PM
Home remodeling activity reported by builders increased in the third quarter and remains above the benchmark 50 level for the 18 th consecutive quarte...
Thu, Oct 19 2017, 9:42 AM
A new Bulletin from Freddie Mac makes several changes to its Seller Guide . The most impactful changes relate to the way sellers can calculate student...
Thu, Oct 19 2017, 9:26 AM
Yesterday I had some interesting geographic involving the United States that prompted Tony H. to send a few more items. The closest state to Africa? I...
Thu, Oct 19 2017, 8:34 AM
The past 3 days were disconcerting for bond markets--especially yesterday, which saw yields move higher at their quickest pace in two weeks. This thr...
Wed, Oct 18 2017, 4:58 PM
Everything seemed so simple last Friday when bonds were surging past technical barriers in strong volume--ostensibly ringing the dinner bell for mor...
Wed, Oct 18 2017, 4:13 PM
Mortgage rates moved modestly higher today despite bigger movement in underlying bond markets. In part, this is a byproduct of the way rates behaved a...
Wed, Oct 18 2017, 9:58 AM
The U.S. Census Bureau is mum on causation, but results from the southern region would indicate that the August and September hurricanes probably drov...
Wed, Oct 18 2017, 9:51 AM
Fannie Mae has lowered its third quarter projections for GDP growth by 0.2 percent to an annualized 2.4 percent based on its assessment of the overall...
