Wed, Aug 9 2017, 2:23 PM
Jumbo loans have historically been more expensive for borrowers than those the meet the "conforming" loan limit - which is currently set at $424,100. ...
Wed, Aug 9 2017, 10:05 AM
There are several definitions of "pain trade" floating around on the web, and I'm not a huge fan of any of them. The top google hit is particularly b...
Wed, Aug 9 2017, 9:24 AM
A while back I was walking past a small group of a lender’s senior managers and one of them was joking, “With the money we’ll save by shutting down qu...
Wed, Aug 9 2017, 9:10 AM
CoreLogic reported on Tuesday that the national mortgage delinquency rate in May was the lowest in nearly a decade . The company's Loan Performance In...
Wed, Aug 9 2017, 8:26 AM
Refinancing performed well during the week ended August 4, pulling the Mortgage Bankers Association's Market Composite Index higher. The Index, a meas...
Tue, Aug 8 2017, 7:15 PM
Bonds began the day in moderately weaker territory and continued to lose ground through the early afternoon. After consolidating in extreme fashion...
Tue, Aug 8 2017, 6:50 PM
Mortgage rates moved microscopically lower today, keeping them in line with the best levels in more than a month. The caveat is that there really hasn...
Tue, Aug 8 2017, 11:27 AM
Like all large financial institutions, the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are required by the Dodd-Frank Act to su...
Tue, Aug 8 2017, 10:05 AM
The extent to which inflation-related metrics have come into focus is uncanny relative to just how unimportant they'd been to markets for most of th...
Tue, Aug 8 2017, 9:38 AM
Production folks should know that Senators announced the introduction of S. 1753 , the SAFE Transitional Licensing Act, which would amend the SAFE Mor...
Tue, Aug 8 2017, 9:08 AM
Consumer attitudes toward buying and selling a home turned negative in July. Fannie Mae's National Housing Survey conducted during the month found few...
Mon, Aug 7 2017, 5:55 PM
Bond markets began the week in underwhelming fashion, with both MBS and Treasuries ending the day very close to unchanged compared to Friday's latest ...
Mon, Aug 7 2017, 5:30 PM
Mortgage rates were generally unchanged today, compared to Friday afternoon's latest levels. Only a handful of lenders responded to strength in bond m...
Mon, Aug 7 2017, 11:28 AM
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's (the GSE's) low downpayment loans are apparently beginning to cause some pain for FHA lending. Black Knight's Mortgage Mo...
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...
