Tue, Aug 26 2014, 11:52 AM
The Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently revised its policy guidance to residential
mortgage servicers and subservicers regarding t...
Tue, Aug 26 2014, 11:45 AM
Mortgage banks substantially improved
their bottom line numbers in the second quarter after posting a loss on every
loan written during the first ...
Tue, Aug 26 2014, 11:39 AM
The S&P Dow Jones Case-Shiller Home Price Indices for June confirm
what reports from earlier months have indicated, that there is a sustained
slowd...
Tue, Aug 26 2014, 10:04 AM
Counterparty
risk continues to be a BIG DEAL, and word broke yesterday of a huge
title agency defalcation in Georgia. (Defalcation: an amount of f...
Tue, Aug 26 2014, 7:31 AM
A cute little phenomenon got a fair amount of buzz on an otherwise slow news day yesterday. It has to do with today's Durable Goods data and the fact...
Tue, Aug 26 2014, 4:31 PM
The last week of Summer continues to be the last week of Summer as far as markets are concerned. Email auto-responders are working overtime, parents ...
Tue, Aug 26 2014, 3:16 PM
So many questions have been raised by the surprising state of affairs in the world of mortgage rates this year. Why did rates move in the opp...
Mon, Aug 25 2014, 12:23 PM
In more ways than one, today has been ' modest ' for bond markets. The overnight session was slower than normal, even for a Monday due to a bank holi...
Mon, Aug 25 2014, 11:32 AM
All
this hope (hype?) that the mortgage industry is placing on the
Millennials to bolster volume makes my head spin. (Scholars can't even
agree ...
Mon, Aug 25 2014, 10:46 AM
New home sales were down again in July, declining by
2.4 percent from June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 412,000
units. But the June rate...
Mon, Aug 25 2014, 7:40 AM
Few pieces of domestic economic data have caught the attention of bond markets recently. That's not to say there haven't been short term reactions to...
Mon, Aug 25 2014, 4:57 PM
The biggest story and smallest surprise of the day was the fact that trading conditions in bond markets were extra light. Between the market closur...
Mon, Aug 25 2014, 3:25 PM
Mortgage rates were steady for some lenders today, and slightly lower for others. The movement wasn't nearly enough to affect rates themselves, meani...
Mon, Aug 25 2014, 2:20 PM
Home prices continued to increase in June but the
Home Price Index (HPI) released by Black Knight Financial Services showed
continued slowing in t...
Fri, Aug 22 2014, 12:36 PM
J-Hole Knee-Jerk: A brief, but volatile market reaction to Fed Chair Yellen's speech at the Jackson Hole symposium.
That's been the day's primary ...
Fri, Aug 22 2014, 11:33 AM
The race to the bottom, in terms of guidelines or razor-thin pricing margins , prompted on industry vet to send me, "There's a lot of space in the mo...
Fri, Aug 22 2014, 7:31 AM
Yellen delivers the keynote speech at Jackson Hole today. What does that even mean? I remember being somewhat perplexed by the unclear significance ...
Fri, Aug 22 2014, 5:05 PM
With limited interruptions, bond markets have been sleepwalking since most of the summer. While that has afforded them some measure of forward prog...
Fri, Aug 22 2014, 3:22 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower for a second straight day following a much-anticipated speech from Federal Reserve Chair Yellen in Jackson Hole. Whil...
Thu, Aug 21 2014, 11:46 AM
Existing home sales in July hit their
best pace so far this year the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said
today, reflecting a 2.4 percent in...
Thu, Aug 21 2014, 11:44 AM
Total refinances through completed
through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (the GSEs) in the second quarter topped
344,000. The Federal Housing Finance
...
Thu, Aug 21 2014, 11:31 AM
It seems hard to imagine, but
CoreLogic said on Wednesday that once-upon-a time, before the housing crisis,
the sale of distressed homes made up on...
Thu, Aug 21 2014, 11:28 AM
A credit report is enough to completely steal a person's identity . It is? Does it take a few weeks? No - it takes 3 minutes .
And we wonder why...
Thu, Aug 21 2014, 11:18 AM
It's been a pleasantly resilient day for MBS and Treasuries so far. After a completely uneventful overnight session, both opened just slightly weak...
Thu, Aug 21 2014, 7:42 AM
Today's calendar of scheduled events is the busiest of the week with Jobless Claims at 8:30am followed by Philly Fed and Existing Home Sales at 10am. ...
Thu, Aug 21 2014, 4:29 PM
One week ago tomorrow, Treasuries fell to their lowest yields in over a year after Ukraine said it blew up part of a Russian convoy. Until yesterday ...
Thu, Aug 21 2014, 3:46 PM
Mortgage rates ended a 3-day losing streak , moving modestly lower today. This wasn't the case in the morning, but several lenders released positiv...
Wed, Aug 20 2014, 12:25 PM
MBS are outperforming Treasuries today and have been flirting with positive territory heading into the noon hour. Treasuries are still about 1bp hi...
Wed, Aug 20 2014, 10:19 AM
The CFPB released a bulletin outlining expectations for mortgage servicers that transfer loans;
bulletin includes information on how mortgage se...
Wed, Aug 20 2014, 8:51 AM
As interest rates pulled back last week, refinancing drove mortgage
application activity slightly higher . The
Mortgage Bankers Association said t...
Wed, Aug 20 2014, 7:28 AM
Bond markets have endured 2 days of losses so far this week. Both days have also been prime examples of illiquid summertime trading. This simply mea...
Wed, Aug 20 2014, 5:19 PM
Bond markets have a secret. Or rather, we have to pretend like it's a secret in order to turn something very boring into something remotely interesti...
Wed, Aug 20 2014, 4:36 PM
Mortgage rates were higher for a third straight day as financial markets continue a measured correction from last Friday's volatility. At that tim...
Wed, Aug 20 2014, 2:35 PM
Realtors responding to a recent survey
by the California Association of Realtors® (C.A.R.) reported that investors and
investor sales are a shrinki...
Tue, Aug 19 2014, 12:33 PM
Relative to yesterday's exceptionally linear trading, prices have been much more volatile today. The overnight session was constructive for global ...
Tue, Aug 19 2014, 10:45 AM
Two important measures of strength in
the housing and construction industries moved substantially higher in July the
U.S. Census Bureau and the De...
Tue, Aug 19 2014, 10:42 AM
It
is fun to see that U.S. homebuilder confidence rose to a seven-month
high, primarily driven by lower mortgage rates and an improving jobs
mar...
Tue, Aug 19 2014, 7:43 AM
It remains to be seen whether today's economic data will even matter given the incredibly light participation so far this week. In other words, today...
Tue, Aug 19 2014, 4:15 PM
Everything that happened in bond markets today, happened before noon. Whether this was a factor of European markets contributing to the volatility or...
Tue, Aug 19 2014, 2:08 PM
Mortgage rates continued moving higher today after headlines suggested a chance for deescalation in Ukraine. It was the geopolitical risk in Ukrai...
Mon, Aug 18 2014, 12:11 PM
As is frequently the case for Monday's during the summer, bond markets have not been very active. Trading levels have remained in a narrow range as...
Mon, Aug 18 2014, 11:14 AM
Measures
of builder confidence in the new home market rose again this month. The third consecutive monthly increase in the
National Association o...
Mon, Aug 18 2014, 10:59 AM
Say
what you will about Zillow (and people do), the firm does not fall
short as a driver of information. As many in the industry are preparing
t...
Mon, Aug 18 2014, 7:34 AM
Drama is fueling a surprisingly strong 2014 rally in US bond markets. Most of that drama has to do with the European economy and geopolitical risks o...
Mon, Aug 18 2014, 5:23 PM
After hitting the lowest levels in over 2 months on Friday, mortgage rates bounced almost all the way back to Thursday's levels. That's somewha...
Mon, Aug 18 2014, 5:23 PM
The day started out inoffensively enough with MBS and Treasuries only down slightly from Friday's latest levels. Those were also incidentally the be...
Mon, Aug 18 2014, 4:21 PM
The Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau (CFPB) has increased threshold amounts for loans governed by various trigger
limits under Qualified Mortgag...
Fri, Aug 15 2014, 12:22 PM
The trading day began mostly uneventfully, with bond markets working their way into positive territory by the domestic open. Economic data didn't sta...
Fri, Aug 15 2014, 11:32 AM
Guess
what opened up on this date 100 years ago? No, it wasn't the first
Starbucks. The Panama Canal opened. Do you think the mortgage industry
...
Fri, Aug 15 2014, 7:41 AM
There are plenty of frustrating times in financial markets where a trend is only as good as it's most recent trading day. This is the old: "the tren...
