Tue, Mar 24 2015, 11:13 AM
New home sales rose on a seasonally adjusted annual basis in
February, partially because of a near tripling of sales in the Northeast . Nationall...
Tue, Mar 24 2015, 11:11 AM
Thank you to Carol Kimball who sent along this site of " inexplicably terrible real estate photos ." My guess is that every underwriter has seen their...
Tue, Mar 24 2015, 7:34 AM
Yesterday's trading activity, while light, was a welcome addition to Friday's. The two combined to completely reverse the somewhat scary negative bou...
Tue, Mar 24 2015, 4:13 PM
While mileage may vary depending on the lender, many are getting close to levels not seen since Thursday Feb 5th, a day before the NFP report that kic...
Tue, Mar 24 2015, 3:14 PM
Mortgage rates fell again today , extending an exceptionally strong 2+ week move back to lower levels after an exceptionally weak 5 week move to 201...
Tue, Mar 24 2015, 1:40 PM
Three economists writing for the
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's Economic
Letter , are theorizing that the explosion of lending, especially...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 12:16 PM
Bond markets are having an exceptionally uneventful morning, trading in a narrow, slightly stronger range for the most part. This was the case righ...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 11:51 AM
Short supplies of existing home inventory continued to hold
back sales in February the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said today, but
con...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 11:02 AM
Today
I head off to Austin, Texas for four days of MBA STRATMOR Peer Group
Program meetings - a great opportunity to sit in a room with the MBA,
...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 7:34 AM
Following last week's Fed meeting, we had two successive days of subdued trading, each trading "inside" the previous session's range. Bonds can go ei...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 5:38 PM
While there is some variation depending on the part of the country and the school district, this week is Spring Break for quite a few people, and if...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 4:33 PM
Mortgage rates continued lower today, reaching levels not seen since February 9th. This further solidifies the positive move that followed last we...
Mon, Mar 23 2015, 2:15 PM
The number of pending foreclosures nationwide, the "foreclosure
inventory," reached a milestone in February .
For the first time since December 20...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 12:29 PM
As we head into the afternoon hours, we can look back on an overnight and early domestic session that was largely uneventful and slightly positive ...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 10:49 AM
Pro
Teck Valuation Services' Home Value Forecast (HVF) examined the impact
of lower oil prices on home values. Perhaps to no one's surprise, the
...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 7:29 AM
Considering all the build up to Wednesday's FOMC events, the rally that followed was a breath of fresh air . Not 12 hours later and bonds were alrea...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 4:58 PM
Mortgage rates moved modestly lower on average today after doing an admirable job of holding their ground amid weaker market conditions yesterday. ...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 4:58 PM
It was a calm and light trading day right from the outset today. Without options expirations, volume would have been the lowest of the year in bond...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 3:47 PM
The 114th Congress's
first attempt at housing financial reform legislation hit the House hopper on
Thursday. The bill, H.R. 1491 establishes an ins...
Fri, Mar 20 2015, 2:25 PM
A few weeks ago there were a flurry of
comments on MBS Live from members
expressing concern about a sudden increase in appraisals reflecting...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 10:48 AM
"Rob,
with the Fannie price changes Tuesday, does the securities market still
charge a premium for high balance conforming? " Yes it does - pools...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 7:34 AM
First of all, there is no true "non-Fed-related" way to look at yesterday's rally. For US markets, it had almost everything to do with the Fed. But ...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 4:24 PM
Mortgage rates moved higher over the course of the day today as financial markets underwent a correction following yesterday's big move lower in ra...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 4:18 PM
It's always a bit disheartening when the day after an awesome rally ends up erasing a good-sized chunk of the gains. That was the case today as the c...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 2:33 PM
February was the second month in a row that refinancing made
up more than half of all mortgage originations.
Ellie Mae's latest Origination
Insi...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 2:32 PM
In its quarterly survey of lenders' sentiment Fannie Mae
found increasing optimism about the mortgage business. The survey conducted in the first qu...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 2:18 PM
In
2013 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) both essentially bankrupt five years
earlier, posted huge profits. For Fannie
Mae it was $84 billi...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 1:38 PM
The day began well enough, with only moderate weakness in domestic bond markets. Moreover, 10yr yields were doing a great job of holding on to import...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 12:29 PM
Domestic bond markets began the day in stronger territory, and you can tell they're not too happy about it. If Treasuries and MBS had their way, th...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 10:40 AM
What is the Willis Tower? I don't know, but the $1.3 billion Sears Tower , complete with a $775 million loan, was sold to Blackstone.
The WSJ repor...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 9:08 AM
It has been a tough winter and with spring
less than a week away borrowers have apparently not yet emerged from hibernation. Applications for both...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 7:34 AM
Today is Fed day and naturally, that's where 100% of the focus has been and will be. Markets are convinced that the Fed will remove the word "patient...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 5:28 PM
Mortgage rates plummeted today , relatively speaking. While the average improvement of 0.10% might not look like much at face value, it's the bigge...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 5:23 PM
Most of what would have been written to recap today's events was accidentally written this morning before they happened. The article I'm referring to...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 1:56 PM
Even though the number of underwater
homes increased seasonally in the fourth quarter of 2014, CoreLogic reports
that 1.2 million borrowers regained...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 11:21 AM
Housing starts and completions plummeted nationwide in
February, but especially in the Northeast and Midwest where record cold and
nearly constant s...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 10:26 AM
Happy
St. Patrick's Day! Irish or not, many celebrated last Saturday instead
of tonight, although in honor of today Hal M. writes, "The Irish
in...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 10:14 AM
Embargoed until midnight - also didn't know if the charts would translate this way or not - looks like they might have.
It
seems counterintuitive,...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 7:34 AM
The sense that financial markets are circling the wagons in preparation for tomorrow's FOMC events is palpable. Yesterday ended up being the lightes...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 4:59 PM
Mortgage rates continue gently lower again today, extending a recent winning streak that's seen improvements on 6 out of the past 7 days. While an...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 4:56 PM
What a boring 3 days! The only thing that's happened for bond markets is an utterly mechanical trend back toward Thursday morning's low yields and/or...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 1:01 PM
As expected, not much is going on today as the focus remains on tomorrow's FOMC events. Overnight volumes and participation levels were light for the...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 11:00 AM
It's been an uneventful day so far for bond markets, but a noticeably stronger one. The overnight session got thing off to a positive start as Treasu...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 11:00 AM
Builder confidence in the market for newly built, single family homes has declined
to its lowest level in nine months. The
National Association of ...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 9:44 AM
Practically
everyone has been involved in failed business ventures. Some go away
entirely, but some try to bounce back. Anyone who has ever flown ...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 7:34 AM
It's an easy answer to be sure, but this time it's probably the best one. Financial markets, and especially bonds, stand the best chance to be inspir...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 4:24 PM
The most important thing to understand about today's market movements is that by writing this sentence (or reading it, in your case), we've already gi...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 3:46 PM
Mortgage rates fell modestly to begin the week following several weaker-than-expected economic reports. Economic data affects rates by motivating ...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 12:26 PM
In the context of this week's range, today has been well-contained and fairly mild in terms of volatility. After hitting the best levels of the wee...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 10:51 AM
Last
month I had the privilege of spending some time at the Florida Ellie
Mae Encompass event with CEO Jonathan Corr. I was reminded that he had
...
