Mon, Feb 11 2019, 4:26 PM
I have to stretch to make a day like today interesting. As I'm fond of doing, I could easily label this one of those unofficial 3-day weekend type of...
Mon, Feb 11 2019, 3:55 PM
Mortgage rates held their ground fairly well today, despite the fact that underlying bond markets were weaker. Bond market weakness is associated with...
Mon, Feb 11 2019, 8:57 AM
When I grow up, I want to live…next to the airport? Usually, airports are there before people move in around them, and then the residents all complain...
Mon, Feb 11 2019, 8:53 AM
The two key fiscal issues at the moment are the trade deal with China and the expiration of temporary government funding at the end of this week. Bet...
Fri, Feb 8 2019, 6:05 PM
The bond market is exuding a sort of confidence we've not seen in a long time. I'm not saying that because outright rate levels are lower than they...
Fri, Feb 8 2019, 5:36 PM
Mortgage rates may not be quite as low as they were on January 31st, but they nonetheless managed to end at the lowest levels of this week . Unlike Ja...
Fri, Feb 8 2019, 11:08 AM
The second proposal for reform of the housing finance system in a week was just introduced by the National Association of Realtors® (NAR). Their "visi...
Fri, Feb 8 2019, 9:52 AM
Whereas "moving the goalposts" has a negative connotation in general (referring to the changing of the rules in the middle of the game), it's a fairly...
Fri, Feb 8 2019, 9:11 AM
Here’s some trivia for today’s potluck in the Shipping Department: Las Vegas has 150,000 hotel rooms and spending a night in each would take you 411 y...
Thu, Feb 7 2019, 6:48 PM
2014 was marked by a sense of hope that helped both sides of the market (debt and equity) make solid gains heading into early 2015. Rates in the US...
Thu, Feb 7 2019, 5:37 PM
Thursday plays host to vastly more mortgage rate articles than any other day of the week. This has to do with the regular weekly release of Freddie Ma...
Thu, Feb 7 2019, 1:35 PM
Respondents to Fannie Mae's January National Housing Survey adopted a new outlook to go along with the new year, primarily in responses about their pe...
Thu, Feb 7 2019, 10:37 AM
The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA's) Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI), a measure of access to mortgage credit, partially rebounded from...
Thu, Feb 7 2019, 10:12 AM
If you thought last week's Fed announcement was surprisingly dovish/friendly/concerned, you weren't alone. Compared to the "steady-as-she-goes" Decem...
Thu, Feb 7 2019, 9:25 AM
Guys – here’s your one-week warning for Valentine’s Day. In related news, countless scientific studies have proven that a male human being is incapabl...
Wed, Feb 6 2019, 3:20 PM
If you're operating under the assumption that the prevailing momentum in bond markets is sideways for the time being, today offered few surprises. In...
Wed, Feb 6 2019, 2:47 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower for the second straight day after rising moderately on Friday and Monday. This brings the average lender to the second lowe...
Wed, Feb 6 2019, 12:03 PM
In their December Insight report Freddie Mac's economists estimated the country will fall short of its housing needs this year by about 2.5 million un...
Wed, Feb 6 2019, 9:14 AM
One of the best side effects of the recent consolidation has been the outperformance of MBS vs Treasuries. We often talk about the fact that MBS like...
Wed, Feb 6 2019, 9:03 AM
Fun with numbers! Here’s something interesting in the finance world: The number of public companies in the U.S. has decreased by almost 50% from 1996 ...
Wed, Feb 6 2019, 8:28 AM
We usually hear about Fannie Mae's National Housing Survey (NHS) in terms of whether respondents think it is a good time to buy or if they see the eco...
Wed, Feb 6 2019, 8:14 AM
Mortgage applications suffered their third consecutive decline during the week ended February 1. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said its Marke...
Tue, Feb 5 2019, 5:24 PM
An interesting thing happened today for those who were paying close enough attention to notice. At face value the week's most important economic repo...
Tue, Feb 5 2019, 5:03 PM
Mortgage rates stabilized today, after moving higher somewhat quickly following several strong economic reports on Friday. If you'd like to revisit th...
Tue, Feb 5 2019, 11:57 AM
The CoreLogic Home Price Index puts the annual rate of appreciation nationally at 4.7 percent in December and the gain from November 2018 to December ...
Tue, Feb 5 2019, 9:53 AM
This is a concept we've revisited a few times over the years and it goes something like this:
A strengthening economy implies rising earnings/profi...
Tue, Feb 5 2019, 8:55 AM
The other day I was on a Southwest flight and I noticed someone on the aisle seat crumple up a couple of unused tissues and put them on the empty midd...
Mon, Feb 4 2019, 4:30 PM
Chinese markets were closed overnight for New Year. This slowed trade somewhat. Coupled with a lack of significant economic data this morning, it al...
Mon, Feb 4 2019, 4:08 PM
Mortgage rates continued moving higher today as Fridays unfortunate series of events seems to have motivated a big bounce. What events are those? Name...
Mon, Feb 4 2019, 3:23 PM
Although they covered the topic in last month's Mortgage Monitor , further declines in interest rates have prompted Black Knight to take another look ...
Mon, Feb 4 2019, 9:34 AM
Last week's key events were the Fed announcement on Wednesday and the jobs report on Friday (with other econ data playing a strong supporting role). ...
Mon, Feb 4 2019, 9:04 AM
“All mushrooms are edible. Some are only edible once.” I am positive there are families in the U.S. that only buy or sell a house once in their life, ...
Mon, Feb 4 2019, 8:52 AM
It's widely known that homeownership rates are historically low and that they peaked at 69 percent in 2005. They began dropping a year or two later an...
Fri, Feb 1 2019, 7:24 PM
I imagine if you polled a thousand people who were among the most qualified to have an opinion about today's nonfarm payrolls forecast, you'd have b...
Fri, Feb 1 2019, 7:01 PM
Mortgage rates fell significantly yesterday, extending a reaction to the Federal Reserve's announcement and press conference from Wednesday. The Fed w...
Fri, Feb 1 2019, 3:12 PM
There was a flurry of rumors and a bit of a bull market around the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae stock a few weeks ago after Federal Housing Finance Agen...
Fri, Feb 1 2019, 11:02 AM
Construction spending rose 0.8 percent in November to a seasonally adjusted rate of $1.30 trillion compared to $1.29 trillion in October. The Census B...
Fri, Feb 1 2019, 9:51 AM
While the median price of a home sold nationally increased more than 5 percent over the 12 months ended in October, the monthly payment on that home w...
Fri, Feb 1 2019, 9:02 AM
I can tell it’s almost Valentine’s day since Costco just put out the Halloween decorations. Speaking of Costco, its minimum wage is now $14 per hour. ...
Thu, Jan 31 2019, 5:35 PM
Yesterday marked a fairly big adjustment in the Fed's monetary approach to the same old underlying economic realities that were in place at the time o...
Thu, Jan 31 2019, 4:31 PM
Mortgage rates fell more triumphantly today, extending their reaction to yesterday's Federal Reserve announcement. The Fed isn't in direct control of ...
Thu, Jan 31 2019, 11:51 AM
The chant throughout 2018 from housing industry sources was inventory, inventory, inventory - or lack of same. It was blamed first for rising home pri...
Thu, Jan 31 2019, 10:49 AM
New home sales exploded in November, rising 16.9 percent from October's dismal performance to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 657,000 units. The ...
Thu, Jan 31 2019, 9:50 AM
There's no question that the Fed was surprisingly dovish yesterday--even among those who were expecting a dovish shift. But there is a question as to...
Thu, Jan 31 2019, 8:55 AM
Rumors of a cancelled President’s Club award event in a mortgage division of a bank in the Northwest have tongues wagging about acquisition rumors by ...
Wed, Jan 30 2019, 4:45 PM
Today's Fed Announcement was the first scheduled big-ticket market mover of the year since the NFP report on January 4th. With the government shutdow...
Wed, Jan 30 2019, 4:15 PM
Mortgage rates fell moderately today, largely in response to the Federal Reserve's policy announcement. The Fed is in charge of setting a key short-te...
Wed, Jan 30 2019, 2:03 PM
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in November December indicates that the labor market has continued to strengthen a...
Wed, Jan 30 2019, 11:31 AM
Pending home sales were down again in December , falling below the Pending Home Sale Index's (PHSI's) benchmark 100 level to 99.0. The index was at 10...
Wed, Jan 30 2019, 9:20 AM
Today's key even is the 2pm ET Fed Announcement. There will be no hike and no adjustment to existing policies. That said, given a noticeably dovis...
