Fri, Jul 17 2015, 5:41 PM
Domestic bond marched to their own beat today, holding much steadier than European bonds overnight and standing their ground against a stock rally thi...
Fri, Jul 17 2015, 5:40 PM
Mortgage rates continued the recent trend of very small improvements today. Most lenders are essentially unchanged, and while a few rate sheets ...
Fri, Jul 17 2015, 2:52 PM
Home remodeling is expected to soon kick back into gear . LIRA, the Leading Indicator of Remodeling
Activity produced by the Joint Center for Housi...
Fri, Jul 17 2015, 2:50 PM
The
first half of 2015 saw foreclosure activity continue to decline. RealtyTrac's Midyear U.S. Foreclosure Market
Report shows that 597,589 proper...
Fri, Jul 17 2015, 2:43 PM
The importance of cash in home sale transactions
declined in April for the 28 th consecutive month. CoreLogic said on Thursday that all-cash home
...
Thu, Jul 16 2015, 10:32 AM
First off, it's important to note that everything is still playing out inside a narrow range overall. We're about to discuss improvements in bond m...
Thu, Jul 16 2015, 10:16 AM
A number of selling updates to Freddie Mac's
Single-Family Seller/Servicer Guide are slated to go into effect over the next
several months. The lar...
Thu, Jul 16 2015, 9:54 AM
Applications for mortgages to purchase newly constructed
homes rose again in June and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said this
bodes well ...
Thu, Jul 16 2015, 9:53 AM
Earnest Hemingway was born in the comfortable Midwestern suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, a place he described as full of, "wide lawns and narrow minds."...
Thu, Jul 16 2015, 7:33 AM
Greece voted overwhelmingly in favor of accepting the bailout terms negotiated this past weekend. The vote took place after the closing bell yesterda...
Thu, Jul 16 2015, 6:25 PM
Greek votes, German votes, European official comments, Draghi Press conference, Jobless Claims, NAHB, Philly Fed, Greek bridge loans, and more congres...
Thu, Jul 16 2015, 5:36 PM
Mortgage rates are doing a great job of holding their ground after two days of solid improvement. If we look closely enough, today's rate sheets a...
Thu, Jul 16 2015, 1:25 PM
Builder confidence may finally be back
to stay. After yo-yoing in and out of
the "good" range of 50 or more for years, the National Association of ...
Wed, Jul 15 2015, 10:16 AM
Yes, IT systems have sailed through things like Y2K (remember that?) and the leap second on June 30 th . But there are bigger challenges. The Federal ...
Wed, Jul 15 2015, 9:21 AM
The take-away from the Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA's) current press
release on mortgage volume was its summary of performance over the last t...
Wed, Jul 15 2015, 7:32 AM
Both in terms of scheduled data on the calendar and unscheduled headline potential from Greece, today is action-packed. The domestic economic data is...
Wed, Jul 15 2015, 5:49 PM
Mortgage rates once again focused more on domestic issues today as Greece had not yet voted to approve its bailout by the time US markets closed....
Wed, Jul 15 2015, 5:49 PM
Most of Yellen's congressional testimony today was occupied by political axe-grinding rather than thoughtful dialogue on the path of monetary policy. ...
Wed, Jul 15 2015, 5:32 PM
The financial crisis was obviously better for the rental housing market than
it was for the purchase market but the health of the former appears to b...
Wed, Jul 15 2015, 1:45 PM
It's been a tremendously busy morning for bond markets with news coming in on multiple fronts. Not only that, but much of the news is at least worthy...
Tue, Jul 14 2015, 11:56 AM
We've had a nice little break from the recent norm today. Domestic economic data is actually responsible for the lion's share of bond market moveme...
Tue, Jul 14 2015, 10:31 AM
More than a quarter of the national foreclosure inventory
that existed in May 2014 had been absorbed by May of this year and completed
foreclosures ...
Tue, Jul 14 2015, 10:28 AM
June marked the beginning of hurricane season , as the North Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1 st and ends November 30 th .
The last time ...
Tue, Jul 14 2015, 7:33 AM
Hindsight is 20/20, but only for those with both eyes open. Unfortunately and comically, Treasury, The SEC, The Fed, and The CFTC still aren't lookin...
Tue, Jul 14 2015, 7:24 PM
There's nothing new to report from the MBS Mid-Day as bond markets continued to trade well within the morning's range through the close. The best lev...
Tue, Jul 14 2015, 4:01 PM
Mortgage rates took a break from reacting to headlines coming out of Europe and focused instead on domestic economic data. That turned out to be...
Tue, Jul 14 2015, 3:52 PM
A decline in mortgage refinancing was
blamed in part for the second consecutive decline in quarterly profits posted
by Wells Fargo & Co. The bigg...
Mon, Jul 13 2015, 12:56 PM
A working paper just released by the Federal Housing Finance
Agency (FHFA) attempts to determine the reasons why mortgages given to
first-time home...
Mon, Jul 13 2015, 10:29 AM
Here's
some good news. The National Reverse Mortgage Lenders
Association/RiskSpan Reverse Mortgage Market Index which analyzes trends
in home va...
Mon, Jul 13 2015, 7:33 AM
"Tsipras, and a majority of the Greek population (according to polls), want to stay in the EU, but no longer wish to abide by the austerity measures t...
Mon, Jul 13 2015, 5:03 PM
Mortgage rates didn't move much today , but are slightly higher for most lenders by the afternoon. Rates were noticeably higher in the morning, b...
Mon, Jul 13 2015, 5:03 PM
It's not immediately apparent when looking at 10yr yields being roughly 5.5bps higher this afternoon, but bond markets largely deferred their reaction...
Mon, Jul 13 2015, 1:58 PM
When is the be-all end-all Greek bailout negotiation weekend not the be-all end-all Greek bailout negotiation? When it ends with both sides going ba...
Fri, Jul 10 2015, 11:18 AM
While the share of home sales accounted
for by distressed properties continues to drift lower, only two states are
approaching what could be consi...
Fri, Jul 10 2015, 11:12 AM
The Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD) has announced a final rule to help communities that receive HUD funds meet
their fair housing...
Fri, Jul 10 2015, 11:05 AM
The FDIC has updated the Compliance Examination Manual to include examination procedures for TRID
in order to allow financial institutions a bet...
Fri, Jul 10 2015, 7:32 AM
A trend channel is a set of two parallel lines connecting the highs and lows of a charted security. One way to visually describe a trend channel wi...
Fri, Jul 10 2015, 6:44 PM
Bond markets had been limping back toward slightly stronger territory heading into the afternoon. (Keep in mind, of course, that's stronger territo...
Fri, Jul 10 2015, 5:42 PM
Mortgage rates move sharply higher for a 2nd straight day, now fully erasing all of the improvement seen since July 1st. The same risky, volatil...
Fri, Jul 10 2015, 1:41 PM
To many, Greece is the boy who cried wolf when it comes to negotiating reforms in exchange for aid from its Eurozone creditors. So when the week be...
Fri, Jul 10 2015, 1:01 PM
One of the biggest challenges
(and greatest opportunities) loan officers face today is the maze of constantly
changing guidelines, programs, and pol...
Thu, Jul 9 2015, 12:34 PM
Domestic bond markets have taken part in a choppy, volatile, but reasonably strong move away from risk every day so far in July. That means rates hav...
Thu, Jul 9 2015, 11:48 AM
Catching up on servicing news, don't forget that the
FHFA will now require servicers of mortgages to have a minimum net
worth of $2.5mm plus 2...
Thu, Jul 9 2015, 8:04 AM
Payments
on a mortgage used to purchase a three-bedroom home were more affordable than
paying rent on a similar home in 66 percent of the counties...
Thu, Jul 9 2015, 7:32 AM
There's very little left on the domestic calendar this week in terms of economic data. Today brings only Jobless Claims in the morning and the 30yr...
Thu, Jul 9 2015, 6:57 PM
Mortgage rates rose fairly quickly
today, ending the best 4-day winning streak since early March. On a
positive note, this only takes us bac...
Thu, Jul 9 2015, 6:51 PM
The easiest promise to make for 2015 has been that of volatility . It's not the worst we've ever seen, but it continues at a healthy pace in terms o...
Wed, Jul 8 2015, 11:52 AM
For many lenders regardless of size, health care costs are expensive. Unfortunately it is about to become worse. The New York Times reports health in...
Wed, Jul 8 2015, 10:07 AM
The drop in interest
rates during the week ended July 3 sent mortgage application volume higher on a
seasonally adjusted basis but the shortened w...
Wed, Jul 8 2015, 7:33 AM
Bond market volatility (and indeed market volatility in general) continue to be a hallmark of 2015. This has been a common theme in financial news ...