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...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 2:26 PM
Almost 200 senior mortgage lenders told Fannie Mae about their plans to both acquire and keep customers through the company's Fourth Quarter Mortgage ...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 10:15 AM
Home price increases, as measured by CoreLogic's Home Price Index (HPI) continued to pick up speed in December on an annual basis. However, they pulle...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 9:32 AM
In many respects, the market response to the coronavirus outbreak has been able to take cues from past experience with SARS in 2002/2003. In many oth...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 9:02 AM
Fitness instructor: “Have you ever done a marathon?” Me: “You mean like on Netflix?” Both take stamina (of some sort), as does merely looking at the U...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 6:28 PM
Today's key scheduled event was the release of the ISM Manufacturing PMI--one of the several most important reports after the perennial heavy hitter, ...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 5:39 PM
In the world of interest rates, it's good to be a mortgage today . The dominant species on that world is US Treasuries: the quintessential dollar-base...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 12:44 PM
Total construction spending ended 2019 down slightly from the prior year. The U.S. Census Bureau said the total value of construction, both public and...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 10:22 AM
Black Knight, it the current edition of its Mortgage Monitor covering December mortgage performance data, writes an epitaph for slowing home price app...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 9:18 AM
The total count of confirmed coronavirus cases will continue to grow for quite some time (several months, perhaps). Markets and epidemiologists alike...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 8:57 AM
“I boarded a Southwest flight over the weekend, sat down, sneezed, and muttered something in Mandarin. I had the whole row to myself for entire flight...
Fri, Jan 31 2020, 6:43 PM
The homeownership rate seems stubbornly stuck only a few percentage points from where it bottomed out in the second quarter of 2016. The U.S. Census B...
Fri, Jan 31 2020, 6:07 PM
When the World Health Organization declared coronavirus an international health emergency yesterday, there were two schools of thought. At first glan...
Fri, Jan 31 2020, 5:38 PM
Mortgage rates inched even lower today as the market resumed efforts to react to and account for risks surrounding the coronavirus outbreak. Weaker ec...
Fri, Jan 31 2020, 9:12 AM
Yesterday offered up a fairly intense trading session for the bond market. Yields moved to the lowest levels in months with 10yr Treasuries hitting 1...
Fri, Jan 31 2020, 9:02 AM
Interesting times. Our CFPB has a new Chief Experience Officer . United Wholesale has an ad in the Super Bowl , recommending brokers to consumers. Exp...
Thu, Jan 30 2020, 3:11 PM
Mortgage rates improved again today as the market continued to react to updates on the coronavirus outbreak. For top tier scenarios, the average lende...
Thu, Jan 30 2020, 12:05 PM
In the throes of the housing crisis, it sometimes seemed as though FHA was the only way to finance a home purchase , especially for those with less th...
Thu, Jan 30 2020, 10:35 AM
With the Fed out of the way, coronavirus cases still growing rapidly, and no major correction seen in the bond market, the question on everyone's mind...
Thu, Jan 30 2020, 9:00 AM
What if you bought into an investment thinking you were going to earn a decent return for 30 years and instead it paid off in four months? Not only th...
Thu, Jan 30 2020, 8:51 AM
Homeownership is apparently still one of the best ways to build wealth. The Year-End Home Sales Report from ATTOM Data Solutions shows that the typica...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 5:08 PM
It's fashionable to criticize Fed Chair Powell for negatively affecting the bond market during his customary press conference on Fed Announcement da...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 4:37 PM
Mortgage rates regained their footing today, moving back to long-term lows after pausing to move slightly higher yesterday. The definition of "long-te...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 2:02 PM
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in OctoberDecember indicates that the labor market remains strong and that economic a...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 10:35 AM
December's pending home sales erased the small gain posted in November and the National Association of Realtors' (NAR's) Pending Home Sales Index (PHS...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 9:39 AM
Imagine a world where the Federal Reserve was here to entertain and comment on sports betting rather than offer dry, carefully worded updates on monet...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 9:25 AM
Bonds are holding below what had been a yield floor since mid-October. Yesterday raised some concern about the recently stronger trend reversing, but...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 9:08 AM
My cat Myrtle never paid much attention to Brexit, up until recently a hopeless parliamentary quagmire. (“Brexistential fear”: An irrational fear that...
Wed, Jan 29 2020, 8:14 AM
Refinancing continues to dominate mortgage activity, spurred by another dip in mortgage rates. The Mortgage Banker Association (MBA) said the volume o...
Tue, Jan 28 2020, 5:18 PM
Stocks moved higher today and bond yields did the same. Given that coronavirus has been the key consideration for both sides of the market, the movem...
Tue, Jan 28 2020, 4:28 PM
Mortgage rates were steady to slightly higher today, leaving the average lender just a hair above the lowest rates in months, and still very close to ...
Tue, Jan 28 2020, 11:39 AM
Freddie Mac reported this week that its total mortgage portfolio increased at an annualized rate of 15.2 percent in December, a substantial change fro...
Tue, Jan 28 2020, 10:42 AM
The recent re-acceleration of home price gains continued in November. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index which covers all n...
Tue, Jan 28 2020, 8:50 AM
Loan officers and lenders know that the population in the United States continues to shift, and this creates some continued great opportunities to inc...
Tue, Jan 28 2020, 8:44 AM
Bonds finally broke out of one of their prevailing ranges yesterday as Wuhan virus fears reached a new level. Some may roll their eyes at this sort o...
Mon, Jan 27 2020, 5:05 PM
Mortgage rates continued lower to start the week as Wuhan Virus continues to be diagnosed at an exponential rate. As we discussed last week, interest ...
Mon, Jan 27 2020, 10:58 AM
A lot of expectations and optimism were probably dashed by the December report on new home sales from the Census Bureau and Department of Housing and ...
Mon, Jan 27 2020, 9:45 AM
Last week was really the first truly interesting week of 2020 (and arguably of the past several months) as far as the prevailing range in the bond mar...
Mon, Jan 27 2020, 8:23 AM
Remember when there actually was an “average,” and you weren’t afraid to say that someone was average? Now everyone is “above average.” (Did my sarcas...
Fri, Jan 24 2020, 6:06 PM
We had to wait all the way until January 24th of 2020, but bonds finally offered their first real shred of willingness to challenge the established ra...
Fri, Jan 24 2020, 5:25 PM
Mortgage rates moved meaningfully lower over the past 2 days as panic over the coronavirus outbreak continues affecting financial markets. If this epi...
