Wed, Jul 26 2017, 10:09 AM
New home sales pulled out a slight month-over-month gain in June only because estimates of sales in May were revised down. The U.S. Census Bureau and ...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 9:43 AM
Remember 2015? The Fed spent the whole year talking about hiking rates for the first after spending years at 0% and ultimately didn't get around to i...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 9:17 AM
We’re in the midst of state fair season, and with it all the wonderful organic health food. Have you tried deep fried butter? Have a hankering for fri...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 8:31 AM
A decline in purchase mortgage applications cancelled out most of a moderate increase in refinancing during the week ended July 21. Nonetheless, the M...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 4:24 PM
Bonds sold off aggressively today, for a combination of reasons that are tremendously unsatisfying in a traditional market-watching sense. For exam...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 3:18 PM
Mortgage rates moved abruptly higher today, erasing the improvement seen last week. An entire week's worth of movement may or may not be worth stressi...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 2:08 PM
Unless one follows the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac conservatorship drama on a regular basis, it is easy to get lost in the legal weeds. MND has dipped in a...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 10:42 AM
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index hit another new record in May, the sixth consecutive month it did so while the Federal Housin...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 9:33 AM
Lenders cutting margins in a diminishing mortgage marketplace. You bet. Does one lender want 100% market share? Perhaps. Here’s the latest example: Al...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 9:21 AM
After enjoying a nice rally since July 10th, bond markets are taking the 2 days leading up to tomorrow's Fed announcement to book some profits and get...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 5:18 PM
How's that for an exciting headline? At least it's an " extreme ," technically--just not the sort of extreme that would pique our interest (but still...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 4:23 PM
Mortgage rates held steady today, which leaves them in line with the lowest levels in July. In underlying bond markets (bond movement directly impacts...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 11:35 AM
Most of the major proposals for reforming the housing finance system rely on two steps to minimize the risk that any one or two institutions, and in t...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 11:30 AM
Existing home sales slipped in June, with the blame again placed on low levels of inventory . The decline in sales, announced on Monday by the Nationa...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 10:03 AM
In March 2011, the Fed announced it would change things up with respect to its policy announcements. Although there would still be 8 of them each yea...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 9:10 AM
What should lenders and loan officers be concerned about? What’s threatening their livelihood, besides all cash buyers, venture capital firms buying h...
Fri, Jul 21 2017, 6:09 PM
As expected, today could be better characterized as a highly-regulated narcotic sleep aid than an interesting trading day for bond markets. The dream...
Fri, Jul 21 2017, 5:14 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower today, setting yet another new low for the month of July. For the past 2 weeks, rates have been pushing back against a fair...
Fri, Jul 21 2017, 11:29 AM
It remains to be seen if it passes into law, or how it will hold up during the process, but housing industry groups say an agreement has been hammered...
Fri, Jul 21 2017, 9:34 AM
Under the heading, “What’ll they think of next?”, especially for aging Boomers, comes stairs that store energy and help the next person walk up them! ...
Fri, Jul 21 2017, 9:29 AM
One of the hallmarks of classic (read: old school) technical analysis is the role of volume in confirming market movements. For instance, if 10yr y...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 7:06 PM
Talk about your anticlimactic conclusions! It's not that the European Central Bank (ECB) was likely to make any meaningful changes in its policy stan...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 5:59 PM
Mortgage rates held relatively steady today, keeping them in line with the lowest levels in more than 3 weeks. There was relatively little market move...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 3:39 PM
The single agency security toward which the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), have been...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 9:34 AM
This morning we’ve had the usual Thursday initial jobless claims economic release. At the other end of the teeter totter, here’s an amazing stat to ta...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 9:28 AM
Refinancing held its ground in June, with that share of the mortgage market remaining at 32 percent. While that is a significant decline from the 47 p...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 9:15 AM
Black Knight Financial Services said on Thursday that continued low interest rates fostered another increase in prepayments . The national prepayment ...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 8:33 AM
Mario Draghi is the President of the European Central Bank (ECB). That's the EU's version of the Fed. Like the Fed in the past, the ECB is still ad...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 5:56 PM
Much has been made of tomorrow's European Central Bank (ECB) Announcement, mainly because of its proximity to ECB President Draghi's comments on June ...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 4:56 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower today, despite slightly weaker underlying bond markets. This has been an ongoing phenomenon in recent days. Bonds improve, ...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 9:50 AM
In a broad generalization, when people have money to invest they usually think about stocks, bonds, or real estate. (Yes, I know there are other asset...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 9:48 AM
Housing permits and starts both reversed their respective two-month slides in June, and both did so convincingly , far outpacing analysts' expectation...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 9:41 AM
This commentary will begin it's life as the "day ahead" entry for July 19th, 2017, but it may as well be a "knowledge base" entry for the validity of ...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 8:24 AM
Mortgage application volume bounced back during the week ended July 14, following a sharp downturn a week earlier. That week had been shortened by the...
Tue, Jul 18 2017, 4:45 PM
If there is one thematic event at the heart of the past 4 weeks, it was a series of comments from European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi b...
Tue, Jul 18 2017, 3:45 PM
Mortgage rates fell today, but continue lagging behind the movements seen in underlying bond markets. Part of that has to do with the timing of bond m...
Tue, Jul 18 2017, 11:43 AM
Our neighbors to the north seem to think the grass is pretty green on this side of the fence. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) says that fo...
Tue, Jul 18 2017, 10:38 AM
Home builder confidence continues backing down from its post-crisis peak earlier this year, although the National Association of Realtors (NAHB) calls...
Tue, Jul 18 2017, 10:28 AM
How much would you pay to keep your job, or find a new one? Political analysts forecast that two wealthy contenders for the 2018 Illinois governor spo...
Tue, Jul 18 2017, 9:12 AM
It remains the case that Thursday is the focal point of the week, with European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi set to tell reporters how fa...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 4:59 PM
Mortgage rates are largely dictated by movements in bond markets--specifically mortgage-backed securities (MBS). When bonds improve, prices rise and i...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 4:57 PM
Today was an exceptionally light day in terms of news, volume, participation, and everything else we normally care about when it comes to market mov...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 1:02 PM
Applications for mortgages to purchase newly constructed homes posted what was termed a seasonal decline in June. The Mortgage Bankers Association sai...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 1:01 PM
Fannie Mae said it is sticking with its forecast for 2.0 percent economic growth in 2017, a projection it first made in February. The estimate of 2.1 ...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 9:22 AM
There’s plenty of talk about real estate agents, appraisers, and loan officers being replaced by artificial intelligence or robots. In legal news, JPM...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 9:18 AM
It's the middle of summertime, the middle of a month, and there's a light economic and event calendar in the US. These are prime conditions for tra...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 8:42 AM
The excitement of buying a new home has worn off fast for almost half of Americans. Forty-four percent of homeowners have some regrets about their cur...
Fri, Jul 14 2017, 4:58 PM
Today was bittersweet for bond markets, with strong gains in the morning, and an almost complete reversal by the end of the day. As expected, the e...
Fri, Jul 14 2017, 4:03 PM
Mortgage rates are experiencing increased volatility at the end of this week, which was to-be-expected given the calendar of events and economic data....
Fri, Jul 14 2017, 3:47 PM
Community banks and credit unions may soon be subject to new guidelines that will require them to report information on home equity lines of credit, d...
