Fri, Mar 27 2015, 10:35 AM
I
love it when I receive an e-mail warning me, "You've had unusual and
suspicious activity on your American Express Card." I don't have an
Ameri...
Fri, Mar 27 2015, 7:34 AM
There's been a lot of talk about GDP recently, but it's important to keep in mind that most of it has to do revised GDP estimates for the first quar...
Fri, Mar 27 2015, 4:55 PM
It's that time again. Or, at least it will be next Friday. After 2 months in a row of painful NFP reactions in bond markets, the big jobs report is ...
Fri, Mar 27 2015, 4:21 PM
Mortgage rates had one of their least exciting days of the week today, moving just modestly lower from yesterday's latest levels. The trading ra...
Fri, Mar 27 2015, 2:48 PM
The old maxim that a household rents only until it can
afford to buy a home is apparently being stood on its head in a lot of housing
markets. A st...
Fri, Mar 27 2015, 1:05 PM
With the exception of only a few trades during a few minutes, Fannie 3.0 MBS prices have remained in a range of 101-28 to 101-29 this morning. That'...
Thu, Mar 26 2015, 12:28 PM
In the past five years there has been a monumental shift in
mortgage loan servicing. Bank servicing
subsidiaries, which once dominated in the mar...
Thu, Mar 26 2015, 12:13 PM
While a study released on Thursday by
RealtyTrac shows a huge discrepancy between the growth in home prices and
increasing wages, it appears that ho...
Thu, Mar 26 2015, 12:02 PM
It's been a strange week for domestic bond markets so far. Just 2 short days ago, bonds were rallying with a seeming disregard for negative cues fr...
Thu, Mar 26 2015, 10:20 AM
Fannie announced some important news to any changes in the way self-employed income is considered. Sure enough, the folks on Wisconsin Avenue (soon ...
Thu, Mar 26 2015, 7:24 AM
Will the Fed raise rates? Is economic data sliding? Are stocks and bonds more interested in trading the rate hike or the data? All of these were fa...
Thu, Mar 26 2015, 4:51 PM
Ever since bond markets failed to respond positively to yesterday morning's exceptionally weak Durable Goods report, things have been almost exclusiv...
Thu, Mar 26 2015, 3:51 PM
Mortgage rates rose rapidly today, almost completely erasing the improvement following last week's Fed Announcement. This is especially ironic consid...
Wed, Mar 25 2015, 12:14 PM
Today's trading has offered an interesting development or two. The first was the reaction to the Durable Goods data. It was significantly weaker t...
Wed, Mar 25 2015, 10:02 AM
Don't
think the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening? USA Today
reports the world's richest 1% of people control over 50% of total
gl...
Wed, Mar 25 2015, 9:09 AM
Stoked by the lowest interest rates in several weeks the volume of applications
for mortgages to both purchase and refinance homes increased by the...
Wed, Mar 25 2015, 7:34 AM
Yesterday morning, we discussed the fact that bond markets needed to make additional gains beyond recent technical floors, or risk sending the signal...
Wed, Mar 25 2015, 5:41 PM
It began as just another day in a 12-day winning streak for bond markets that had seen 10yr yields recover 40bps peak to trough. Actually, "just an...
Wed, Mar 25 2015, 3:23 PM
Mortgage rates finally moved noticeably higher today, something they haven't done on 11 out of the last 12 days. Yesterday, I pointed out that su...
Wed, Mar 25 2015, 2:45 PM
Freddie Mac said today that housing
market stability "stumbled a bit" due to the cold winter weather and softening
economic growth. The company's...
Tue, Mar 24 2015, 12:17 PM
A frequent topic of interest over the past few years--and especially recently--is the trickle down effect from European bond markets to mortgage rat...
Tue, Mar 24 2015, 11:13 AM
New home sales rose on a seasonally adjusted annual basis in
February, partially because of a near tripling of sales in the Northeast . Nationall...
Tue, Mar 24 2015, 11:11 AM
Thank you to Carol Kimball who sent along this site of " inexplicably terrible real estate photos ." My guess is that every underwriter has seen their...
Tue, Mar 24 2015, 7:34 AM
Yesterday's trading activity, while light, was a welcome addition to Friday's. The two combined to completely reverse the somewhat scary negative bou...
Tue, Mar 24 2015, 4:13 PM
While mileage may vary depending on the lender, many are getting close to levels not seen since Thursday Feb 5th, a day before the NFP report that kic...
Tue, Mar 24 2015, 3:14 PM
Mortgage rates fell again today , extending an exceptionally strong 2+ week move back to lower levels after an exceptionally weak 5 week move to 201...
Tue, Mar 24 2015, 1:40 PM
Three economists writing for the
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's Economic
Letter , are theorizing that the explosion of lending, especially...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 12:16 PM
Bond markets are having an exceptionally uneventful morning, trading in a narrow, slightly stronger range for the most part. This was the case righ...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 11:51 AM
Short supplies of existing home inventory continued to hold
back sales in February the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said today, but
con...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 11:02 AM
Today
I head off to Austin, Texas for four days of MBA STRATMOR Peer Group
Program meetings - a great opportunity to sit in a room with the MBA,
...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 7:34 AM
Following last week's Fed meeting, we had two successive days of subdued trading, each trading "inside" the previous session's range. Bonds can go ei...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 5:38 PM
While there is some variation depending on the part of the country and the school district, this week is Spring Break for quite a few people, and if...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 4:33 PM
Mortgage rates continued lower today, reaching levels not seen since February 9th. This further solidifies the positive move that followed last we...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 2:15 PM
The number of pending foreclosures nationwide, the "foreclosure
inventory," reached a milestone in February .
For the first time since December 20...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 12:29 PM
As we head into the afternoon hours, we can look back on an overnight and early domestic session that was largely uneventful and slightly positive ...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 10:49 AM
Pro
Teck Valuation Services' Home Value Forecast (HVF) examined the impact
of lower oil prices on home values. Perhaps to no one's surprise, the
...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 7:29 AM
Considering all the build up to Wednesday's FOMC events, the rally that followed was a breath of fresh air . Not 12 hours later and bonds were alrea...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 4:58 PM
Mortgage rates moved modestly lower on average today after doing an admirable job of holding their ground amid weaker market conditions yesterday. ...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 4:58 PM
It was a calm and light trading day right from the outset today. Without options expirations, volume would have been the lowest of the year in bond...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 3:47 PM
The 114th Congress's
first attempt at housing financial reform legislation hit the House hopper on
Thursday. The bill, H.R. 1491 establishes an ins...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 2:25 PM
A few weeks ago there were a flurry of
comments on MBS Live from members
expressing concern about a sudden increase in appraisals reflecting...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 10:48 AM
"Rob,
with the Fannie price changes Tuesday, does the securities market still
charge a premium for high balance conforming? " Yes it does - pools...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 7:34 AM
First of all, there is no true "non-Fed-related" way to look at yesterday's rally. For US markets, it had almost everything to do with the Fed. But ...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 4:24 PM
Mortgage rates moved higher over the course of the day today as financial markets underwent a correction following yesterday's big move lower in ra...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 4:18 PM
It's always a bit disheartening when the day after an awesome rally ends up erasing a good-sized chunk of the gains. That was the case today as the c...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 2:33 PM
February was the second month in a row that refinancing made
up more than half of all mortgage originations.
Ellie Mae's latest Origination
Insi...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 2:32 PM
In its quarterly survey of lenders' sentiment Fannie Mae
found increasing optimism about the mortgage business. The survey conducted in the first qu...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 2:18 PM
In
2013 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) both essentially bankrupt five years
earlier, posted huge profits. For Fannie
Mae it was $84 billi...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 1:38 PM
The day began well enough, with only moderate weakness in domestic bond markets. Moreover, 10yr yields were doing a great job of holding on to import...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 12:29 PM
Domestic bond markets began the day in stronger territory, and you can tell they're not too happy about it. If Treasuries and MBS had their way, th...
