Mon, Apr 10 2017, 5:32 PM
On a positive note, bonds were slightly stronger today and yields held just barely below a technical level that has been more of floor than a ceilin...
Mon, Apr 10 2017, 4:09 PM
Mortgage rates rose slightly again today, despite moderate improvement in underlying bond markets. Typically, bond market improvement corresponds to l...
Fri, Apr 7 2017, 12:24 PM
Servicers might have a loyalty problem. Or, more likely, a marketing one. In its April Mortgage Monitor , much of which we covered earlier this week, ...
Fri, Apr 7 2017, 10:04 AM
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were big players in the multi-family sector of the commercial real estate market last year. According to the Mortgage Banke...
Fri, Apr 7 2017, 9:55 AM
If you think mortgage regulations are running amok, as part of the Affordable Care Act, restaurants with 20 or more locations will soon have to post s...
Fri, Apr 7 2017, 8:22 AM
Cue the "all eyes" headlines that seem to pop up on NFP day, a la "All Eyes on NFP." Well, this certainly used to be true. It will probably be tru...
Fri, Apr 7 2017, 5:40 PM
Mortgage rates rose modestly today, compared to yesterday's latest levels. Compared to the morning's rate sheets however, the rise was sharper, but ev...
Fri, Apr 7 2017, 2:42 PM
After a couple of high flying months and after setting several survey records in February, Fannie Mae's Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI) ran out o...
Thu, Apr 6 2017, 10:09 AM
Access to jumbo mortgage loans rebounded from a loss in February to drive the Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA's) Mortgage Credit Availability Inde...
Thu, Apr 6 2017, 9:36 AM
Want a good statistic to demonstrate how tight the housing market is? 57% of all realtors have been involved in a sale with at least 10 offers on a si...
Thu, Apr 6 2017, 9:17 AM
The day begins with a similar pattern shaping up to that seen in late March when the healthcare bill drama was highest. Said drama translated to th...
Thu, Apr 6 2017, 5:16 PM
Bonds continue grinding it out in an exceptionally horizontal sort of direction! If you saw the best and the worst of trading levels on Monday, you'v...
Thu, Apr 6 2017, 4:45 PM
Mortgage rates remained largely unchanged today, on average. Once again, there was a fair amount of volatility in bond markets (which dictate rates) d...
Wed, Apr 5 2017, 10:54 AM
The Urban institute's (UI's) Ellen Seidman is reporting on an UI event held last month to discuss what she terms "overly restrictive credit-scoring sy...
Wed, Apr 5 2017, 9:05 AM
U.S. auto loan debt hit a record $1.16 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2016. That averages out to $6,100 in car payments per licensed driver. In fac...
Wed, Apr 5 2017, 8:51 AM
Heading into the end of March, markets were generally preoccupied with the healthcare drama in congress and bond yields were generally consolidating i...
Wed, Apr 5 2017, 8:25 AM
The volume of purchase mortgages continued to increase during the week ended March 31, but steadily shrinking refinance numbers once again pulled over...
Wed, Apr 5 2017, 4:42 PM
Mortgage rates were noticeably higher to begin the day, but most lenders offered mid-day improvements after the release of the hotly-anticipated Fed M...
Wed, Apr 5 2017, 4:40 PM
Coming into today, we had two key options as far as potential market movers were concerned: economic data and the Fed Minutes. On the data front, ADP...
Tue, Apr 4 2017, 11:04 AM
CoreLogic says house price increases picked up the pace again in February. After the rate of appreciation dipped from 7.2 percent for the 12 months en...
Tue, Apr 4 2017, 9:11 AM
How much free time do you have? Not much? You’re not alone, as this story points out, "The rich were meant to have the most leisure time. The working ...
Tue, Apr 4 2017, 8:55 AM
Yesterday's bond market activity suggested that traders definitely had some sort of agenda that went beyond a mere punching of the clock. Even with C...
Tue, Apr 4 2017, 5:40 PM
Coming off of yesterday's excellent performance, today's bond market selling-spree felt jarring --probably more jarring than it actually was. Right ...
Tue, Apr 4 2017, 5:02 PM
Mortgage rates were steady to slightly lower today, even though bond market movement suggested a move higher. That's interesting because mortgage rate...
Mon, Apr 3 2017, 10:16 AM
The conditional prepayment rate (CPR), the annualized percentage of total mortgage principal that borrowers prepay on a pool of loans in a given time ...
Mon, Apr 3 2017, 9:33 AM
Welcome to Q2! I am attending the NYMBA conference for a few days, but 1,300 miles south, in Florida (aka "God's waiting room"), folks are talking "re...
Mon, Apr 3 2017, 9:26 AM
Remember March 15th's Fed Announcement? That was the one where the entire free world was utterly and completely convinced that the Fed would hike s...
Mon, Apr 3 2017, 5:37 PM
From an analytical standpoint, today's trading session was not well-behaved or easy to assess (I saw several iterations of "no one has any idea what...
Mon, Apr 3 2017, 4:58 PM
Mortgage rates fell fairly quickly today as investors adjusted bond market holdings for the new month (higher demand for bonds coincides with lower ra...
Mon, Apr 3 2017, 1:42 PM
Spending on residential buildings fared better than overall construction spending in February. The U.S. Census Bureau said on Monday that expenditures...
Fri, Mar 31 2017, 11:39 AM
After gathering little attention for nearly a decade, the two GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are making news on several fronts. Two developments in ...
Fri, Mar 31 2017, 9:47 AM
Let’s end the week with a non-mortgage question, but one that you mathaletes will enjoy. What would happen if you were hit by a penny falling from a s...
Fri, Mar 31 2017, 9:07 AM
While there are several economic reports that have market-moving power today, the bigger issue for bond markets may be the technical battle that's b...
Fri, Mar 31 2017, 4:59 PM
Mortgage rate were unchanged to slightly lower today. Once again, the actual change you see will depend heavily on the lender in question. Most are fa...
Fri, Mar 31 2017, 4:56 PM
Month/Quarter-end bond buying was nowhere to be seen until today. It can provide a mild but determined positive trend in bond markets that transcends...
Thu, Mar 30 2017, 10:01 AM
Appraised values are key in underwriting a mortgage loan and CoreLogic says one of the challenges is to make sure the information an appraisal provide...
Thu, Mar 30 2017, 9:48 AM
On this date in 1867, 150 years ago, a few years before I started trading MBS, Seward’s Folly was created. Put another way, on this date a treaty was ...
Thu, Mar 30 2017, 9:32 AM
With 10yr yields having made it close to 2017's lower range in the most recent rally, the burden of proof is on bond bulls to come up with j ustificat...
Thu, Mar 30 2017, 6:02 PM
For all of the apparent drama and volatility experienced during the past 2 weeks, it's easy to overlook just how narrow the range has been. There's ...
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 ...
