Thu, Mar 30 2017, 5:20 PM
For the third day in a row, day-over-day mortgage rate movement depends heavily on the lender. That means some lenders will be in noticeably better sh...
Wed, Mar 29 2017, 10:29 AM
Pending home sales in February surprised everyone with an unexpected jump of 5.5 percent . The National Association of Realtors® said its Pending Home...
Wed, Mar 29 2017, 9:47 AM
Back in December the Urban Institute (UI) put a number on the much maligned but somewhat amorphous term "tight credit." It maintained that, between 20...
Wed, Mar 29 2017, 9:39 AM
The average residential loan file has 367,000 documents - and each one must be verified by the underwriter. Okay, just kidding. But every Boeing 737 (...
Wed, Mar 29 2017, 8:46 AM
We characterized yesterday's bond market weakness as a simple and somewhat logical correction. The initial move was Monday morning's rally that was...
Wed, Mar 29 2017, 8:17 AM
Mortgage applications saw a third straight decline in volume during the week ended March 24. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said its Market Co...
Wed, Mar 29 2017, 5:59 PM
There have been two back-to-back "unwind" trades in bond markets. The stage was set by Monday morning's rally which was in response to an absence o...
Wed, Mar 29 2017, 2:00 PM
Compared to yesterday, today's mortgage rates are a moving target depending on the lender. Some are better. Some are worse. On average, rates are unch...
Tue, Mar 28 2017, 10:34 AM
Mortgage lenders contacted in the first quarter of 2017 by Fannie Mae's Mortgage Lender Sentiment Survey expressed the highest expectations for the ec...
Tue, Mar 28 2017, 10:22 AM
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index for January ran counter to other major prices indices in that it continued to show home ...
Tue, Mar 28 2017, 10:08 AM
There has been a lot of recent activity regarding the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac swirling around and reported ...
Tue, Mar 28 2017, 9:39 AM
As an industry, we continue to be reminded of a small minority’s wrongdoings. The latest example comes from New York where a Copiague man was sentence...
Tue, Mar 28 2017, 8:47 AM
Today brings the week's first major economic data with 10am Consumer Confidence serving as the headliner. Before that, we'll get an update on home ...
Tue, Mar 28 2017, 7:51 PM
Just when you thought you'd seen the last of the healthcare bill drama , it comes roaring back. Well, at least it felt like a roar. In retrospect, ...
Tue, Mar 28 2017, 2:06 PM
Just one day after hitting the lowest levels in more than a month, mortgage rates bounced higher today. For all intents and purposes, rates fell on Mo...
Mon, Mar 27 2017, 1:58 PM
Housing remains in high demand in most of the nation, but the housing recovery looks increasingly uneven, depending on location. Whether buyers are sh...
Mon, Mar 27 2017, 11:12 AM
The third major home price index released January data released on Monday and it became the third to post a deceleration in the rate of price apprecia...
Mon, Mar 27 2017, 11:06 AM
This week involves a fair amount of cross-country travel for me (California, Washington DC, Florida, and Utah), and as it turns out Wells Fargo is the...
Mon, Mar 27 2017, 10:08 AM
The biggest questions for Monday comes from financial markets and is directed towards politicians in Washington. Are we done obsessing over the healt...
Mon, Mar 27 2017, 7:07 PM
Today could have gone two ways. We could have come to find out that Friday's "delay" in the vote on the healthcare bill was an actual delay, or we ...
Mon, Mar 27 2017, 6:41 PM
Mortgage rates improved today, hitting the lowest levels in more than a month. Bond markets (which underlie mortgage rates) generally improved last we...
Fri, Mar 24 2017, 10:51 AM
The share of homes sold for cash fell to the lowest level in nearly a decade in full-year 2016. CoreLogic said that 32.1 percent of all home sales in ...
Fri, Mar 24 2017, 10:47 AM
It wasn't exactly bait and switch, maybe unlawful substitution is closer to the mark. Whatever, Experian, the credit reporting company, has been handi...
Fri, Mar 24 2017, 10:22 AM
In legal news, Experian , one of the nation's three major credit reporting bureaus, misled consumers by telling them that the credit scores they purch...
Fri, Mar 24 2017, 9:47 AM
The healthcare bill is all anyone can talk about (here's one recent article from Reuters). We rarely see such an abrupt coalescence of market focus...
Fri, Mar 24 2017, 4:37 PM
More than a few bond bulls out there (those are folks who want rates to go lower!) were eager for the vote to take place on the healthcare bill that...
Fri, Mar 24 2017, 3:22 PM
While some lenders were slightly better or worse versus yesterday, mortgage rates were unchanged on average today. This isn't much of surprise conside...
Thu, Mar 23 2017, 11:14 AM
New home sales posted a much better February than did existing home sales and, in fact, better than most analysts had expected. The U.S. Census Bureau...
Thu, Mar 23 2017, 10:15 AM
The House Financial Services Committee (FSC) held a hearing on Tuesday into the constitutionality of the structure of the Consumer Financial Protectio...
Thu, Mar 23 2017, 9:57 AM
As further evidence that the era of refinancing is ending, Black Knight Financial Services says that prepayment speeds (the SSM rate), historically a ...
Thu, Mar 23 2017, 9:10 AM
Have you been asked to join the Trump Administration’ new group focusing on mortgage finance policy? No? My cat Myrtle hasn't gotten the nod (yet) eit...
Thu, Mar 23 2017, 7:46 AM
In the post-apocalyptic hell (relative) that is the post-election bond market trading environment, there was a noble group of traders who attempted to...
Thu, Mar 23 2017, 6:17 PM
Rarely has something so "off the radar" become such a focal point for financial markets as this week's vote on a healthcare revamp to replace the Aff...
Thu, Mar 23 2017, 4:06 PM
Mortgage rates were slightly higher for the first time in 8 days as markets braced for the impact of political developments. The big issue of the day ...
Wed, Mar 22 2017, 11:20 AM
Existing home sales burst out of the box in January to start the year out with a 3.2 percent increase over the previous month. Those gains, however, w...
Wed, Mar 22 2017, 10:56 AM
What a difference a month makes. After posting monthly price increase in all but one month since early 2012, the Federal Housing Finance Agency report...
Wed, Mar 22 2017, 9:23 AM
Things are getting exciting for markets, and not simply because bond yields have returned to the core of their prevailing range for 2017 just after al...
Wed, Mar 22 2017, 8:36 AM
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said today that the volume of applications for both purchase mortgages and refinancing retreated last week from...
Wed, Mar 22 2017, 5:36 PM
“Dance like no one is watching. E-mail like one day it may be read aloud in a deposition.” Here's some pithier legal news. The Department of Justice i...
Wed, Mar 22 2017, 5:30 PM
Bond markets began the day in slightly stronger territory and quickly embarked on the same sort of rally that characterized yesterday morning. Today'...
Wed, Mar 22 2017, 3:44 PM
Mortgage rates were lower for the 7th day in a row today, further extending their push into the lowest levels of the month. At first, that positive mo...
Tue, Mar 21 2017, 12:39 PM
The reported net profit per loan reported to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) by independent mortgage banks and mortgage subsidiaries of charter...
Tue, Mar 21 2017, 12:36 PM
In terms of credit risk, the loans originated in the fourth quarter of last year are among the highest quality mortgages originated since 2001 accordi...
Tue, Mar 21 2017, 10:16 AM
Who can you trust? Digital Journal reports new malware targets Google Chrome users with a pop up that indicates a new font needs to be installed for w...
Tue, Mar 21 2017, 9:13 AM
Bond markets continue making a case for re-entry into the core of the range that has been intact since December 2016. The December Fed meeting helped...
Tue, Mar 21 2017, 5:21 PM
If there was one catalyst for the overall surge toward higher stocks and rates at the end of 2016, it was the expectation that the new administration'...
Tue, Mar 21 2017, 4:14 PM
Mortgage rates continued lower today as political uncertainty sparked the biggest day of stock market losses since the election. In general, short ter...
Mon, Mar 20 2017, 10:58 AM
Say it ain’t so! Fannie is being bought by an Italian company?! Sure enough, Italy’s Ferrero International SA is buying U.S.-based Fannie May Confecti...
Mon, Mar 20 2017, 9:15 AM
This week will be fairly light in terms of scheduled economic data . The first relatively significant report won't be out until Wednesday (Existing ...
Mon, Mar 20 2017, 7:14 PM
Much like Friday, today was uneventful and moderately positive for bond markets. At some point, we have to consider the combined effects of these sor...
