Fri, Dec 20 2013, 4:29 PM
Mortgage rates bounced back today,
recovery the ground they lost in yesterday's move to 3-month highs.
Today then, is the second worst day in 3...
Fri, Dec 20 2013, 3:53 AM
Here is a fact about the last 48 hours: on the day of and the day after
the Fed finally announced tapering, the most relevant MBS coupon for
c...
Fri, Dec 20 2013, 2:30 PM
Freddie Mac's December U.S. Economic & Housing Market Outlook looks at what the company's chief economist
Frank Nothaft and deputy chief Leonard K...
Fri, Dec 20 2013, 2:06 PM
One settlement and one enforcement
action have been announced in the last 24 hours and they are going to cost two
financial institutions a lot of m...
Fri, Dec 20 2013, 1:19 PM
GDP was stronger than expected this morning, yet bond markets are
in stronger territory. Volume in MBS is light, but they're just
following Treas...
Thu, Dec 19 2013, 12:55 PM
Check out the chart below for some rationale as to why this morning's
very very high Jobless Claims number failed to help MBS and Treasuries
gain ...
Thu, Dec 19 2013, 10:54 AM
Existing home sales in November failed to outdo those in the same month a
year earlier for the first time in 29 months .
The National Association ...
Thu, Dec 19 2013, 10:30 AM
Sometimes
common sense seems to leave the markets, but then again, traders are
smarter than the rest of us, right? "Beginning in January, the Comm...
Thu, Dec 19 2013, 8:43 PM
Bond markets began the day by extending yesterday's late weakness in somewhat of a panicky fashion. By tapering only
by a small amount and by pro...
Thu, Dec 19 2013, 4:22 AM
The Fed tapered yesterday, and bond markets didn't freak out as
much as they might have. Immediately following the announcement, bond
markets wen...
Thu, Dec 19 2013, 4:09 PM
Mortgage rates continued higher today,
reaching levels not seen since the week before the FOMC Announcement in
September. Today's weakness owes...
Thu, Dec 19 2013, 2:04 PM
With new mortgage regulations due to
be implemented in less than a month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
has released a set of mat...
Thu, Dec 19 2013, 1:52 PM
Fannie
Mae said today that the third quarter economy was better than expected with
inventory buildups that doubled from the second quarter, the fa...
Wed, Dec 18 2013, 12:43 PM
The
percentage of loans originated for refinancing increased in November for the
first time in 10 months Jonathan Corr, president and chief operat...
Wed, Dec 18 2013, 12:17 PM
While the most attention-grabbing headline of the morning so far has concerned the largest jump in Housing Starts since 1990,
the sharpest movem...
Wed, Dec 18 2013, 11:56 AM
US household net worth was
$77 trillion as of the end of Q3, up $1.9T Q/Q. In the third quarter, the
value of corporate equities and mutual funds o...
Wed, Dec 18 2013, 11:19 AM
Housing starts and housing completions for
September, October and November were released by the U.S. Census Bureau and the
Department of Housing and...
Wed, Dec 18 2013, 9:36 AM
The FOMC Statement due out at 2pm will continue in the Fed's fine
tradition of keeping most of the text unchanged and merely updating key
sections...
Wed, Dec 18 2013, 8:50 PM
After almost exactly half a year of discussing the mythical
"Tapering" as a possible outcome of an FOMC Announcement (there were
some grumblings a...
Wed, Dec 18 2013, 8:29 AM
It was another down week for mortgage
application activity. The Mortgage
Bankers Association (MBA) said its Market Composite Index, a measure of
a...
Wed, Dec 18 2013, 7:56 AM
Let's skip to the important stuff about today. While there will be a
backlog of three months of Housing Starts data released in the morning,
as w...
Wed, Dec 18 2013, 5:32 PM
Mortgage rates moved higher today
after the Federal Reserve announced the first reduction in its
purchases of Treasuries and MBS. The reduction...
Wed, Dec 18 2013, 2:05 PM
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September generally suggestsOctober indicates that economic activity has continued...
Tue, Dec 17 2013, 12:50 PM
Negative equity amounts continued to
shrink during the third quarter of 2013 CoreLogic said today. An estimated 791,000 properties regained an equ...
Tue, Dec 17 2013, 11:45 AM
Seeing as how today is yet another mid-December day that doesn't
contain the long-awaited FOMC Announcement, it's proving to be just
another incon...
Tue, Dec 17 2013, 10:59 AM
Clients of Franklin American received this e-mail yesterday: “Due to the market environment and regulatory concerns, Franklin American will be remo...
Tue, Dec 17 2013, 6:59 AM
The Week Ahead spells out the theme of the week and recaps the market exhaustion leading
up to it. Those themes remain in force until tomorrow's...
Tue, Dec 17 2013, 5:41 PM
Ginnie Mae has
taken the first steps toward a planned modernization of its securitization
platform . The company on Tuesday
released four new sys...
Tue, Dec 17 2013, 5:32 PM
It's never fun to be wrapping up our assessment of one major economic event with the conclusion that nothing really matters
until the next one. I...
Tue, Dec 17 2013, 4:37 PM
Mortgage rates remained at the same level for the 4th consecutive day despite some movement in MBS (the "mortgage-backed securities" that most dir...
Tue, Dec 17 2013, 3:23 PM
Home sales in the San Francisco Bay Area like those in the
state at large fell in November DataQuick said today. While state-wide sales, as report...
Tue, Dec 17 2013, 2:43 PM
Home sales declined in California in
November, suffering from diminishing housing affordability in the face of
rising home prices and interest rates...
Tue, Dec 17 2013, 2:16 AM
As loan officers and borrowers
prepare for the Federal Open Market Committee's ("the Fed")
potential tapering announcement Wednesday, Fannie Mae a...
Tue, Dec 17 2013, 1:30 PM
Increasing
mortgage rates eroded refinancing overall in the third quarter and refinancing
through the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) was n...
Mon, Dec 16 2013, 11:56 AM
More than any other day so far in December, today is chock full of that special holiday spirit
that makes for almost inconsequentially light activ...
Mon, Dec 16 2013, 10:39 AM
A Freddie Mac senior vice president is using
the company's blog to debunk a few myths she says may be keeping homeowners
from refinancing through ...
Mon, Dec 16 2013, 10:18 AM
The value of
US pensions has soared this year. Per JPMorgan Chase, pensions now cover 96% of future obligations! Pension values
have seen the bi...
Mon, Dec 16 2013, 7:24 AM
Exhaustion was evident in last week's bond market trading. We discussed that " year-end exhaustion " quite a bit in this post .
To make a long st...
Mon, Dec 16 2013, 5:13 PM
MBS are heading out right in line with Friday's latest levels. The day began well, and bond markets even made gains
following the stronger-than-e...
Mon, Dec 16 2013, 3:55 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged yet again to begin the new week, and thus remain near recent highs with 4.625% the most prevalently quoted rate fo...
Mon, Dec 16 2013, 3:52 PM
The Federal Housing Finance Agency
(FHFA) is inviting public comments on a new proposal to "gradually reduce" loan
limits for mortgages purchased ...
Mon, Dec 16 2013, 1:26 PM
In the second in a series of white
papers exploring the "Foundation for a Sound Housing Market" CoreLogic looks at
the Ability-to-Repay (ATR) and Qu...
Fri, Dec 13 2013, 12:43 PM
"Exhaustion" was the theme of this morning's commentary , and today's price action is confirming that .
One of the byproducts of exhaustion is a ...
Fri, Dec 13 2013, 12:19 PM
After asking for taxpayer assistance for
the first time in its 79 year history last September, a new actuarial report
says the Federal Housing Admin...
Fri, Dec 13 2013, 11:01 AM
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA)
has issued new guidelines for lenders who manually underwrite FHA-backed
mortgage loans. The new underwr...
Fri, Dec 13 2013, 10:11 AM
The
old saying goes, "If there is only one attorney in a town, he'll starve to
death. If there are two attorneys in a town, they'll both get rich." ...
Fri, Dec 13 2013, 7:16 AM
It's been a rather exhausting year for bond markets. Unlike the past
3 years, 2013 marks a substantial dose of selling. Not only that, but
the s...
Fri, Dec 13 2013, 5:12 PM
A new study from the Harvard Joint
Center on Housing Studies in conjunction with the McArthur Foundation looks at
the growing importance of rental h...
Fri, Dec 13 2013, 4:57 PM
The four federal agencies most
involved in supervision of financial institutions as they work to comply with
new Dodd-Frank Act regulations said tod...
Fri, Dec 13 2013, 4:47 PM
One of the bullet points in this morning's commentary said "bond markets
would rather be napping." As it turns out, they made that dream a
realit...