Wed, Aug 8 2018, 12:01 PM
The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said existing home sales cooled during the second quarter amidst what it called "staggeringly low" invento...
Wed, Aug 8 2018, 10:21 AM
Attitudes about buying and selling a home degraded in July. Fannie Mae said its National Housing Survey (NHS) for the month found a net decrease among...
Wed, Aug 8 2018, 9:50 AM
After spending most of July in a narrow, sideways trend, bonds broke higher in yield and looked like they would begin a classic range-breakout sell-of...
Wed, Aug 8 2018, 8:45 AM
The U.S. Census Bureau knows a thing or two about numbers, and it tells us that over the 10 years from 6/30/07 to 6/30/17, the number of “renter” hous...
Wed, Aug 8 2018, 8:04 AM
The week ended August 3 marked the fourth consecutive one in which mortgage activity declined. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said its Market ...
Tue, Aug 7 2018, 3:54 PM
Bonds enjoyed a nice little winning streak beginning last Thursday. As of yesterday, it had carried 10yr Treasury yields below the important 2.95% te...
Tue, Aug 7 2018, 3:32 PM
Mortgage rates were roughly unchanged today. That would make this the 4th day in a row without any move higher in rates, and it would leave us at the ...
Tue, Aug 7 2018, 11:38 AM
Mortgage credit availability scored a significant gain in July. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said its Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MC...
Tue, Aug 7 2018, 11:33 AM
Freddie Mac has announced two new affordable rental programs. The first is a pilot in three markets (Atlanta, Orlando, and Tallahassee) that supports ...
Tue, Aug 7 2018, 9:53 AM
I received an interesting question yesterday as to whether or not there was any significance in the fact that 25, 50, and 100 day moving averages are ...
Tue, Aug 7 2018, 9:50 AM
Another day, another Wells Fargo PR disaster. The company is admitting they have foreclosed on about 400 homes owned by borrowers who were not allowed...
Tue, Aug 7 2018, 8:43 AM
People sometimes ask me how many loans underwriters or closers are doing these days. I turned to the MBA and the STRATMOR Group for hard numbers. Base...
Mon, Aug 6 2018, 5:22 PM
What do I mean when I say 'serendipitous' market movement? In general, this is just another way to say "that's the way the ball bounced, cookie crumbl...
Mon, Aug 6 2018, 4:50 PM
Mortgage rates were slightly lower for the 3rd straight business day, but not for any particular reason. Because of the relatively narrow range, rates...
Mon, Aug 6 2018, 9:34 AM
In terms of scheduled data and events, this week is much lighter than last. It will also be more susceptible to the effects of light liquidity as mar...
Mon, Aug 6 2018, 8:43 AM
In July I was fortunate to spend time in Colorado, Hawai’i, Nevada, Utah, and California, and I look forward to time in Illinois, Montana, Virginia an...
Mon, Aug 6 2018, 8:18 AM
Altough it was forecast to happen long ago, it seems price gains throughout the U.S. are moderating . Black Knight, in its August Mortgage Monitor , c...
Fri, Aug 3 2018, 7:13 PM
Bond markets began the day in roughly unchanged territory as they geared up to digest any curveballs from the payrolls data. NFP came in weaker than ...
Fri, Aug 3 2018, 2:12 PM
Mortgage rates fell again today after the jobs report showed slower payroll growth in July and persistently flat wage growth. On average, this is the ...
Fri, Aug 3 2018, 11:44 AM
CoreLogic is noting a subtle change in rent growth for single-family houses. Its Single-Family Rental Index (SFRI) has logged a steady increase in tho...
Fri, Aug 3 2018, 8:59 AM
I don’t think Brookstone, which declared bankruptcy yesterday, ever sold them, but is the “Tiny House” movement getting big? If you’re near Colorado S...
Fri, Aug 3 2018, 8:45 AM
A recent research paper from the Urban Institute (UI) looks at the benefits provided by real denial rates (RDR) over the traditional measure of credit...
Fri, Aug 3 2018, 8:35 AM
Today brings the sometimes super important nonfarm payrolls data. On average, no other piece of economic data has had as much of an impact on bonds o...
Thu, Aug 2 2018, 4:32 PM
Right at 9:30am this morning, both stocks and bond yields began moving higher . A modest overnight rally in Treasuries quickly came under fire and f...
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 ...
