Wed, Feb 19 2020, 9:26 AM
Thinking about the bond market in terms of rates and yields affords certain analytical luxuries. One is the ability to think in "upside down" terms w...
Wed, Feb 19 2020, 8:34 AM
Mortgage loan applications submitted during the week ended February 14 declined for the first time since mid-January. The Mortgage Bankers Association...
Tue, Feb 18 2020, 3:33 PM
Fannie Mae says the U.S. economy appears to be sustaining itself despite both the problems faced by Boeing and the fears about the global impact of th...
Tue, Feb 18 2020, 3:01 PM
Mortgage rates are starting the new week off on a stronger note after concerns over coronavirus impacts moved markets over the weekend. While coronavi...
Tue, Feb 18 2020, 10:40 AM
Builder confidence dipped a notch in February but still remains at elevated levels. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) says its Housing ...
Tue, Feb 18 2020, 9:13 AM
The ability of the bond market to defy the cues seen elsewhere in the financial market has been relatively impressive over the past few weeks. It cou...
Tue, Feb 18 2020, 8:32 AM
Odd times that we’re living in. Here in New Orleans (“Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!”) some of the talk is about the Boy Scouts of America d...
Fri, Feb 14 2020, 5:27 PM
Until today, even though bonds were already in a sideways pattern, we would have to have given the nod to the uptrend in rates vs the downtrend (2 com...
Fri, Feb 14 2020, 4:02 PM
Mortgage rates have primarily been at the whim of the general tone of coronavirus news for the past few weeks. That meant a swift move to multi-year l...
Fri, Feb 14 2020, 10:32 AM
I'll admit, there are times where I point out some chart-based evidence of uncertainty in the bond market and I feel like we're just delaying an inevi...
Fri, Feb 14 2020, 9:14 AM
Does anyone out there care that credit-card debt rose to a record $930 billion in Q4 2019? (Total mortgage debt hit $9.56 trillion.) How about that th...
Fri, Feb 14 2020, 8:14 AM
Both of the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) posted strong earnings for the fourth quarter of 2019 as well as for the entire year. They are now...
Thu, Feb 13 2020, 11:03 AM
The 2021 Federal Budget prepared by the White House is given little chance of passing Congress but there are a couple of provisions buried in the hund...
Thu, Feb 13 2020, 10:15 AM
Fancy chart overlays and technical studies are frustrating in the sense that they give us another angle to understand and discuss market movement, but...
Thu, Feb 13 2020, 9:17 AM
Do we really have nine more months until the actual election? While you’re answering questions, does someone in your office speak Spanish? Tagalog? Ma...
Thu, Feb 13 2020, 8:18 AM
The fourth quarter report on mortgage delinquencies from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) continues to show problem loans at historically low le...
Thu, Feb 13 2020, 8:16 AM
Inventory issues remain a major concern and are pushing home prices in urban America still higher. The National Association of Realtors'® (NAR's) quar...
Wed, Feb 12 2020, 4:20 PM
A few notes on the bond market's recent plans:
First few days of 2020: Come into the new year ready for that break above 2.0% that everyone was ex...
Wed, Feb 12 2020, 3:43 PM
Mortgage rates have spent just over a week moving back up from the lowest levels in more than three and a half years. Those long-term lows came courte...
Wed, Feb 12 2020, 9:31 AM
Clients want LOs to be subject matter experts on products and current events. But what do lenders know about their LOs, their originator turnover rate...
Wed, Feb 12 2020, 9:17 AM
2 weeks ago, as rates plummeted toward the lowest levels in more than 3 years, I began to point out a very obvious caveat to the gains. Because coron...
Wed, Feb 12 2020, 8:15 AM
Applications for mortgage financing increased again during the week ended February 7 despite a significant decline in those for home purchases. The Mo...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 5:19 PM
Bonds were weaker in the overnight session as Chinese equities markets continued to bounce toward higher levels. This follows a head-fake toward lowe...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 3:51 PM
Mortgage rates were very slightly higher today after being modestly lower over the weekend, but in general, remain very close to the lowest levels in ...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 3:45 PM
Renters questions in a new Freddie Mac survey expressed a rather unfortunate misconception . In its new Profile of Today's Renter and Owner , the comp...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 3:40 PM
It seems as though legalized marijuana is said to be good for almost everything. Now a new study from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has a...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 10:10 AM
Amid a dearth of important economic data between now and Friday, the bond market doesn't have much to do when it comes to pricing in bigger-picture ec...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 8:51 AM
In 1988, there was only one city in America where the average home price was over six times the annual median income. Today there are more than twenty...
Mon, Feb 10 2020, 11:01 AM
Last Friday's January Employment Situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was a good one; total payroll employment increased by 225,000, b...
Mon, Feb 10 2020, 9:36 AM
If the US/Iran flare up provided an opening act to the unexpected drama of 2020, coronavirus has been the headliner. Before these two events took the...
Mon, Feb 10 2020, 9:11 AM
The U.S. is divided up into regions. Have you ever noticed that we say, “Out West” or “Back East” – a holdover from centuries ago. It’s never, “Back W...
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 5:23 PM
Today's big to-do was a paradoxical bond market rally in response to a much stronger-than-expected jobs report. This wasn't just a case of a compelli...
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 3:56 PM
Mortgage rates completely defied the odds. They even defied convention. Specifically, they managed to move appreciably lower even though today's big j...
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 3:37 PM
Fannie Mae's Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI) is on a roll. The company's index, based on some of the results from Fannie Mae's National Housing S...
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 12:37 PM
It seems every data source in the housing industry has its own definition of affordability, most using a mortgage payment to income ratio based on med...
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 10:18 AM
Here's one of those NFP mornings where it would have been very hard to predict what we're seeing in bonds based on what we've seen in the NFP numbers....
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 9:09 AM
I can’t predict the future, don’t even know what I’m doing for lunch today, but in October this commentary suggested that with the MOU inked in Octobe...
Thu, Feb 6 2020, 4:42 PM
The availability of mortgage credit declined slightly last month. The Mortgage Bankers Association said its Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI) ...
Thu, Feb 6 2020, 4:40 PM
The bond market took a break from the past 3 days of weakness today. There weren't any significant economic reports or news events (not as far as the...
Thu, Feb 6 2020, 4:00 PM
Mortgage rates managed to hold steady , for the most part, today. Some lenders were offering slightly better or worse terms compared to yesterday, but...
Thu, Feb 6 2020, 9:23 AM
One of the most stunning and profound features of the past week of trading days has been the intensely higher volumes-especially in the overnight trad...
Thu, Feb 6 2020, 9:07 AM
For years there has been name confusion between Fannie Mae and Fannie May . Name overlap isn’t limited to those two; MERS, familiar to mortgage banker...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 6:14 PM
So far, the correction to the coronavirus bond market rally is only a few days old, but it became much more problematic today. Yesterday was arguably...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 5:28 PM
Mortgage rates moved higher again today as investors reacted to updates about the coronavirus outbreak. This has been the dominant motivation for the ...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 11:37 AM
The Urban Institute (UI) says the five government mortgage lenders and their various ways of accounting for income-driven repayment (IDR) plans are in...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 9:43 AM
Heading into this morning, it looked as if bonds would have a fighting chance, at the very least. The fight in question is against the big bounce tow...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 9:04 AM
Let’s take any brokerage or small mortgage banker, 10 loan officers doing an average of 3 loans per month for 30 loans/month. The company has the oper...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 8:13 AM
Mortgage application volume continues to benefit from lower interest rates. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said today that its Market Composit...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 6:27 PM
We knew we'd have to deal with it at some point, and now we have to wonder if it's already here: the coronavirus bounce.
Why did we know it was c...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 6:03 PM
Mortgage rates have been on a tear recently. The average lender has either held rates steady or improved them every single day since January 16th. Som...
