Wed, Aug 2 2017, 12:34 PM
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Melvin L. Watt focused much of his speech to the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB) on its fi...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 10:13 AM
In April, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) published its proposal for reform of the housing finance system. This week Mike Fratantoni, MBA's Chi...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 9:41 AM
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has strongly endorsed passage of a bill, recently introduced into the U.S. Senate which the trade gro...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 9:33 AM
Recently an older gal pal exclaimed, “It’s all fun and games until your metabolism changes.” Are builders changing their business models to assist hom...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 9:25 AM
With this morning's ADP data and Treasury Refunding Announcement (lays out the slate of auction sizes for the upcoming fiscal quarter ending on Octobe...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 8:43 AM
The volume of mortgage applications declined during the week ended July 28. There were fewer applications for both purchase mortgages and refinancing ...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 4:28 PM
Was it "new month" trading? Or was it a reaction to abysmal sales data from GM? Does it matter if the net effect was a nice move lower for rates? ...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 3:27 PM
Mortgage rates continued lower today, matching the best levels in just over a month. Prospective borrowers are increasingly seeing conventional 30yr f...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 12:11 PM
Construction spending, both public and private, dropped 1.3 percent in June . Spending was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.21 trillion comp...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 10:44 AM
Home prices chalked up another healthy gain in June . CoreLogic reports that its Home Price Index (HPI) marked a 6.7 percent increase compared to the ...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 9:53 AM
"Impending breakout" sounds a bit more dramatic than reality may prove to be, but one never can be sure what the future will hold for bond markets. W...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 9:16 AM
August already? Time flies, and we live in an age where we must prove to machines that we are not machines. What about watching artificial intelligenc...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 5:19 PM
Today's economic data consisted only of Chicago PMI (sometimes a decent market mover) and Pending Home Sales (rarely a noticeable market mover). It a...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 4:43 PM
Mortgage rates moved modestly lower today, despite an absence of improvement in underlying bond markets. Rates typically rise in this scenario, but th...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 11:39 AM
Pending home sales recovered from a three-month swoon in June, increasing 1.5 percent in June. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said its Pe...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 9:36 AM
How much would you pay to drive a cab? In New York City, in 2014, the price of a Taxi Medallion hit $1.3 million. With Uber and Lyft, Medallions are n...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 9:10 AM
The last of the May's four home price indices (HPI) that MND tracks, the version supplied by Black Knight Financial Services, was released on Monday. ...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 9:09 AM
Last Friday's AM commentary had a detailed write-up on the significance of " month-end bond buying ." Here's a link to that, and here's a link to our ...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 6:30 PM
Overnight weakness almost ruined it, but 10yr yields just barely held inside the necessary levels to claim their third straight "inside day." In ot...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 5:16 PM
Mortgage rates were generally flat today, despite improvements in underlying bond markets. Although several lenders did offer price improvements throu...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 11:46 AM
The U.S. homeownership rate ticked up by 0.1 percentage point in the second quarter of 2017, to 63.7 percent. The rate, which trended down for several...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 10:05 AM
We often talk about the month-end trading environment as relatively more supportive for bond markets--all other things being equal. Reason for this a...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 9:29 AM
Freddie Mac's Outlook this month looks at what it calls "the spoiler," the lean inventory of newly constructed homes for sale. While the situation isn...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 9:18 AM
We’re a couple months into the North Atlantic hurricane season which lasts to November 30. It has been 12 years since the US was struck by a major hur...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 4:41 PM
This week continues to be all about Tuesday for bond markets. That was the day with the rather violent, inexplicable sell-off that took yields from...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 3:25 PM
Mortgage rates were mixed today, depending on the lender, but generally held fairly close to yesterday's levels. All this in spite of bond market weak...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 2:22 PM
Freddie Mac has announced a change in requirements for its Home Possible Mortgages, including Home Possible Advantage Mortgages. The changes involve l...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 2:16 PM
The mortgage servicing industry, which took a beating in the public mind during the housing crisis, has somewhat rehabilitated its image in recent yea...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 10:39 AM
Freddie Mac is projecting that 2017 will be another good year for multi-family housing. The company, a major presence in financing multifamily housing...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 10:10 AM
Have you been chipped yet? A Wisconsin company is holding a “chip party” to implant chips into its employees so they can buy snacks with a wave of the...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 9:40 AM
What is a tradeflow? We have a primer that attempts to answer that question on MBS Live (this one), but even after reading that multiple times, you ...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 6:44 PM
Today's focus was understandably on the Fed Announcement, and indeed, most of the movement followed it. But interestingly enough, the biggest volume ...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 5:06 PM
Mortgage rates were steady to slightly lower today, despite fairly substantial movement in underlying bond markets. Bond prices ultimately do more to ...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 2:02 PM
(Additions underlined, deletions struck through)
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in May June indicates that the ...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 10:09 AM
New home sales pulled out a slight month-over-month gain in June only because estimates of sales in May were revised down. The U.S. Census Bureau and ...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 9:43 AM
Remember 2015? The Fed spent the whole year talking about hiking rates for the first after spending years at 0% and ultimately didn't get around to i...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 9:17 AM
We’re in the midst of state fair season, and with it all the wonderful organic health food. Have you tried deep fried butter? Have a hankering for fri...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 8:31 AM
A decline in purchase mortgage applications cancelled out most of a moderate increase in refinancing during the week ended July 21. Nonetheless, the M...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 4:24 PM
Bonds sold off aggressively today, for a combination of reasons that are tremendously unsatisfying in a traditional market-watching sense. For exam...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 3:18 PM
Mortgage rates moved abruptly higher today, erasing the improvement seen last week. An entire week's worth of movement may or may not be worth stressi...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 2:08 PM
Unless one follows the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac conservatorship drama on a regular basis, it is easy to get lost in the legal weeds. MND has dipped in a...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 10:42 AM
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index hit another new record in May, the sixth consecutive month it did so while the Federal Housin...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 9:33 AM
Lenders cutting margins in a diminishing mortgage marketplace. You bet. Does one lender want 100% market share? Perhaps. Here’s the latest example: Al...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 9:21 AM
After enjoying a nice rally since July 10th, bond markets are taking the 2 days leading up to tomorrow's Fed announcement to book some profits and get...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 5:18 PM
How's that for an exciting headline? At least it's an " extreme ," technically--just not the sort of extreme that would pique our interest (but still...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 4:23 PM
Mortgage rates held steady today, which leaves them in line with the lowest levels in July. In underlying bond markets (bond movement directly impacts...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 11:35 AM
Most of the major proposals for reforming the housing finance system rely on two steps to minimize the risk that any one or two institutions, and in t...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 11:30 AM
Existing home sales slipped in June, with the blame again placed on low levels of inventory . The decline in sales, announced on Monday by the Nationa...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 10:03 AM
In March 2011, the Fed announced it would change things up with respect to its policy announcements. Although there would still be 8 of them each yea...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 9:10 AM
What should lenders and loan officers be concerned about? What’s threatening their livelihood, besides all cash buyers, venture capital firms buying h...
