Mon, Aug 7 2017, 10:08 AM
Last week's NFP was eerily predictable. Either that, or I got lucky.
My thought was that the market had been fairly range-bound and especially d...
Mon, Aug 7 2017, 9:32 AM
Hard to believe that yesterday marked the 10-year anniversary of American Home Mortgage’s bankruptcy filing. Many years ago, Angelo Mozilo warned our ...
Mon, Aug 7 2017, 9:18 AM
CoreLogic says conditions in the mortgage market are once again fertile ground for mortgage fraud . The company's National Fraud Risk Index hit a new ...
Fri, Aug 4 2017, 5:55 PM
The week began on Tuesday, for all intents and purposes. July's "month-end" trading generally took place by last Friday and Monday was left as a mere...
Fri, Aug 4 2017, 5:26 PM
While it was far from a dramatic move mortgage rates ticked slightly higher after today's Employment Situation data, otherwise known simply as "the jo...
Fri, Aug 4 2017, 11:23 AM
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs, or "government-sponsored enterprises") were already well past having paid back taxpayer bailouts before this wee...
Fri, Aug 4 2017, 9:18 AM
Harvard research finds that Americans will spend $316B remodeling their homes in 2017 vs. $296B in 2016. This also compares to a low of $222B (in 2009...
Fri, Aug 4 2017, 9:13 AM
My commentary took a bearish turn , essentially saying that bond markets had done what they could to price-in a poor NFP number and that anything out...
Thu, Aug 3 2017, 7:20 PM
I hate to say anything bad about bond market gains. Bond market gains are among a few of my favorite things, after all! I also hope I'm wrong in thi...
Thu, Aug 3 2017, 4:29 PM
Within hours of each other Laurie Goodman, co-director of the Urban Institute's Housing Finance Policy Center, and Melvin Watt, Director of the Federa...
Thu, Aug 3 2017, 3:28 PM
Mortgage rates moved just slightly lower today, bringing them to the best levels in over a month for the 2nd time this week. While that sounds somewha...
Thu, Aug 3 2017, 11:07 AM
While adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) make up only a fraction of mortgage originations (just over 6 percent in the most recent Mortgage Bankers Assoc...
Thu, Aug 3 2017, 9:13 AM
“You never realize how many people you hate until you have to name a baby.” Plenty of folks in their 20s and 30s are, of course, having babies and buy...
Thu, Aug 3 2017, 9:05 AM
The longer the post-election trade plays out (in 3 months, it will have been a year!), the flatter it looks. There have essentially been two similar...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 5:14 PM
The chart in this morning's Day Ahead showed consolidation patterns (lower highs and higher lows) in both German Bunds and US Treasuries. For the l...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 4:27 PM
Mortgage rates held steady today, keeping them in line with the best levels in just over a month. That means the best-qualified borrowers putting more...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 12:34 PM
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Melvin L. Watt focused much of his speech to the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB) on its fi...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 10:13 AM
In April, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) published its proposal for reform of the housing finance system. This week Mike Fratantoni, MBA's Chi...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 9:41 AM
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has strongly endorsed passage of a bill, recently introduced into the U.S. Senate which the trade gro...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 9:33 AM
Recently an older gal pal exclaimed, “It’s all fun and games until your metabolism changes.” Are builders changing their business models to assist hom...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 9:25 AM
With this morning's ADP data and Treasury Refunding Announcement (lays out the slate of auction sizes for the upcoming fiscal quarter ending on Octobe...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 8:43 AM
The volume of mortgage applications declined during the week ended July 28. There were fewer applications for both purchase mortgages and refinancing ...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 4:28 PM
Was it "new month" trading? Or was it a reaction to abysmal sales data from GM? Does it matter if the net effect was a nice move lower for rates? ...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 3:27 PM
Mortgage rates continued lower today, matching the best levels in just over a month. Prospective borrowers are increasingly seeing conventional 30yr f...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 12:11 PM
Construction spending, both public and private, dropped 1.3 percent in June . Spending was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.21 trillion comp...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 10:44 AM
Home prices chalked up another healthy gain in June . CoreLogic reports that its Home Price Index (HPI) marked a 6.7 percent increase compared to the ...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 9:53 AM
"Impending breakout" sounds a bit more dramatic than reality may prove to be, but one never can be sure what the future will hold for bond markets. W...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 9:16 AM
August already? Time flies, and we live in an age where we must prove to machines that we are not machines. What about watching artificial intelligenc...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 5:19 PM
Today's economic data consisted only of Chicago PMI (sometimes a decent market mover) and Pending Home Sales (rarely a noticeable market mover). It a...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 4:43 PM
Mortgage rates moved modestly lower today, despite an absence of improvement in underlying bond markets. Rates typically rise in this scenario, but th...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 11:39 AM
Pending home sales recovered from a three-month swoon in June, increasing 1.5 percent in June. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said its Pe...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 9:36 AM
How much would you pay to drive a cab? In New York City, in 2014, the price of a Taxi Medallion hit $1.3 million. With Uber and Lyft, Medallions are n...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 9:10 AM
The last of the May's four home price indices (HPI) that MND tracks, the version supplied by Black Knight Financial Services, was released on Monday. ...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 9:09 AM
Last Friday's AM commentary had a detailed write-up on the significance of " month-end bond buying ." Here's a link to that, and here's a link to our ...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 6:30 PM
Overnight weakness almost ruined it, but 10yr yields just barely held inside the necessary levels to claim their third straight "inside day." In ot...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 5:16 PM
Mortgage rates were generally flat today, despite improvements in underlying bond markets. Although several lenders did offer price improvements throu...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 11:46 AM
The U.S. homeownership rate ticked up by 0.1 percentage point in the second quarter of 2017, to 63.7 percent. The rate, which trended down for several...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 10:05 AM
We often talk about the month-end trading environment as relatively more supportive for bond markets--all other things being equal. Reason for this a...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 9:29 AM
Freddie Mac's Outlook this month looks at what it calls "the spoiler," the lean inventory of newly constructed homes for sale. While the situation isn...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 9:18 AM
We’re a couple months into the North Atlantic hurricane season which lasts to November 30. It has been 12 years since the US was struck by a major hur...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 4:41 PM
This week continues to be all about Tuesday for bond markets. That was the day with the rather violent, inexplicable sell-off that took yields from...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 3:25 PM
Mortgage rates were mixed today, depending on the lender, but generally held fairly close to yesterday's levels. All this in spite of bond market weak...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 2:22 PM
Freddie Mac has announced a change in requirements for its Home Possible Mortgages, including Home Possible Advantage Mortgages. The changes involve l...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 2:16 PM
The mortgage servicing industry, which took a beating in the public mind during the housing crisis, has somewhat rehabilitated its image in recent yea...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 10:39 AM
Freddie Mac is projecting that 2017 will be another good year for multi-family housing. The company, a major presence in financing multifamily housing...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 10:10 AM
Have you been chipped yet? A Wisconsin company is holding a “chip party” to implant chips into its employees so they can buy snacks with a wave of the...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 9:40 AM
What is a tradeflow? We have a primer that attempts to answer that question on MBS Live (this one), but even after reading that multiple times, you ...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 6:44 PM
Today's focus was understandably on the Fed Announcement, and indeed, most of the movement followed it. But interestingly enough, the biggest volume ...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 5:06 PM
Mortgage rates were steady to slightly lower today, despite fairly substantial movement in underlying bond markets. Bond prices ultimately do more to ...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 2:02 PM
(Additions underlined, deletions struck through)
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in May June indicates that the ...
