Wed, Mar 18 2015, 10:40 AM
What is the Willis Tower? I don't know, but the $1.3 billion Sears Tower , complete with a $775 million loan, was sold to Blackstone.
The WSJ repor...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 9:08 AM
It has been a tough winter and with spring
less than a week away borrowers have apparently not yet emerged from hibernation. Applications for both...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 7:34 AM
Today is Fed day and naturally, that's where 100% of the focus has been and will be. Markets are convinced that the Fed will remove the word "patient...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 5:28 PM
Mortgage rates plummeted today , relatively speaking. While the average improvement of 0.10% might not look like much at face value, it's the bigge...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 5:23 PM
Most of what would have been written to recap today's events was accidentally written this morning before they happened. The article I'm referring to...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 1:56 PM
Even though the number of underwater
homes increased seasonally in the fourth quarter of 2014, CoreLogic reports
that 1.2 million borrowers regained...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 11:21 AM
Housing starts and completions plummeted nationwide in
February, but especially in the Northeast and Midwest where record cold and
nearly constant s...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 10:26 AM
Happy
St. Patrick's Day! Irish or not, many celebrated last Saturday instead
of tonight, although in honor of today Hal M. writes, "The Irish
in...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 10:14 AM
Embargoed until midnight - also didn't know if the charts would translate this way or not - looks like they might have.
It
seems counterintuitive,...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 7:34 AM
The sense that financial markets are circling the wagons in preparation for tomorrow's FOMC events is palpable. Yesterday ended up being the lightes...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 4:59 PM
Mortgage rates continue gently lower again today, extending a recent winning streak that's seen improvements on 6 out of the past 7 days. While an...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 4:56 PM
What a boring 3 days! The only thing that's happened for bond markets is an utterly mechanical trend back toward Thursday morning's low yields and/or...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 1:01 PM
As expected, not much is going on today as the focus remains on tomorrow's FOMC events. Overnight volumes and participation levels were light for the...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 11:00 AM
It's been an uneventful day so far for bond markets, but a noticeably stronger one. The overnight session got thing off to a positive start as Treasu...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 11:00 AM
Builder confidence in the market for newly built, single family homes has declined
to its lowest level in nine months. The
National Association of ...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 9:44 AM
Practically
everyone has been involved in failed business ventures. Some go away
entirely, but some try to bounce back. Anyone who has ever flown ...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 7:34 AM
It's an easy answer to be sure, but this time it's probably the best one. Financial markets, and especially bonds, stand the best chance to be inspir...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 4:24 PM
The most important thing to understand about today's market movements is that by writing this sentence (or reading it, in your case), we've already gi...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 3:46 PM
Mortgage rates fell modestly to begin the week following several weaker-than-expected economic reports. Economic data affects rates by motivating ...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 12:26 PM
In the context of this week's range, today has been well-contained and fairly mild in terms of volatility. After hitting the best levels of the wee...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 10:51 AM
Last
month I had the privilege of spending some time at the Florida Ellie
Mae Encompass event with CEO Jonathan Corr. I was reminded that he had
...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 7:33 AM
Time for bond markets to start thinking even more seriously than they already are. 2014 and Jan 2015 were great. No complaints! We rode the epic w...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 4:28 PM
Bond market trading drove home the point that the current week was over today and that it had been over ever since the post-Retail Sales rally failed ...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 3:39 PM
Mortgage rates were slightly higher today, but remained much closer to the best levels of the week seen yesterday. In general, this week has ser...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 3:18 PM
The competition in today's housing market is suddenly fierce, so fierce that some are calling the cops.
"We got shut down!!" laughed Catherine ...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 12:55 PM
It's been a mostly good morning for bond markets. The overnight session saw modest gains during European hours, and Treasuries even managed to hold...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 10:48 AM
Applications for mortgages to purchase newly constructed
homes jumped significantly in February the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said
toda...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 10:43 AM
Charles Dickens walks into a bar and asks for a martini. The bartender asks, "Olive or twist?"
Some things have a clever twist, others not so much -...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 7:34 AM
There have been no significant instances of economic data this week until today. These sorts of things happen, and it's usually Thursday that ends up...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 5:15 PM
Trading levels began the day in better territory this morning after a strong overnight session for Treasuries. It wasn't so much that they gained a...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 3:56 PM
Mortgage rates were mixed today depending on the lender, but moved just slightly lower on average. This wasn't the case this morning as essentia...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 3:16 PM
Freddie Mac's economists restated their February forecast in
their Economic and Housing Outlook just
released for March, that 2015 could be the b...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 10:50 AM
"Most mortgage bankers know that if they're attacked by a mob of clowns to go for the juggler."
And most mortgage bankers know whether or not the co...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 9:15 AM
Applications for purchase mortgages picked up a little steam this week
even as application volume overall remained flat. The Mortgage Bankers Associ...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 7:34 AM
The first two days of this week were "nice." They got us back in line with what had been the weakest levels of the year before last Friday. In oth...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 5:08 PM
German Bunds dropped to yet another new all-time low today, hitting 0.193 at one point. The Euro plummeted and stocks sold modestly. All of the ab...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 4:30 PM
Mortgage rates continued lower at a steady pace for most lenders today. The week continues to be slow in terms of domestic events and data, but ...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 1:21 PM
Today's 10yr auction was pretty good , although it required a bit of weakness leading up to it in order to generate the relatively strong result. Th...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 12:52 PM
Some magical combination of new QE tradeflows and Greek drama (surprisingly enough) has driven German Bund yields well into new all-time lows today. ...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 10:24 AM
It was hailed by NBC news on Monday as
the most radical change to credit reporting in decades and New York Attorney
General Eric T. Schneiderman s...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 10:17 AM
The
mortgage industry continues to deal with unintended consequences of
over-regulation, including higher prices for borrowers. The barrel
indus...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 7:34 AM
It ended up being interesting that the focus of yesterday's Week Ahead was the absence of data leaving us with a less obstructed view of traders' inte...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 5:29 PM
First, a quick point of order: remember that tonight is "the roll" for Fannie and Freddie 30yr Fixed MBS. That means March coupons will stop tradin...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 4:04 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower for second day today, with the combined improvements erasing roughly half of the losses seen on Friday. The brings ...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 2:03 PM
The percentage of consumers believing the economy is on the right track finally crossed paths with those who say the economy is on the wrong track i...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 1:49 PM
Completed foreclosures declined by
nearly a quarter over the course of 2014 CoreLogic said today, and the
foreclosure inventory has improved even ...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 12:59 PM
It's hard to know where to start discussing today's market activity, largely because today's market activity never really started . Ever since t...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 10:25 AM
Occasionally
I am asked about how the agencies handle certain types of debt. As a
reminder, Fannie Mae requires that all deferred installment debt...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 7:33 AM
Over the years, I've frequently gone back to the "limited data" theme on certain weeks where there is--well... limited data. The reason to mention/di...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 5:20 PM
On the morning after 'springing forward,' we could forgive a bit of confusion or a bit of fatigue as folks who use archaic alarms may have been runnin...
