Fri, Mar 13 2015, 7:33 AM
Time for bond markets to start thinking even more seriously than they already are. 2014 and Jan 2015 were great. No complaints! We rode the epic w...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 4:28 PM
Bond market trading drove home the point that the current week was over today and that it had been over ever since the post-Retail Sales rally failed ...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 3:39 PM
Mortgage rates were slightly higher today, but remained much closer to the best levels of the week seen yesterday. In general, this week has ser...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 3:18 PM
The competition in today's housing market is suddenly fierce, so fierce that some are calling the cops.
"We got shut down!!" laughed Catherine ...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 12:55 PM
It's been a mostly good morning for bond markets. The overnight session saw modest gains during European hours, and Treasuries even managed to hold...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 10:48 AM
Applications for mortgages to purchase newly constructed
homes jumped significantly in February the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said
toda...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 10:43 AM
Charles Dickens walks into a bar and asks for a martini. The bartender asks, "Olive or twist?"
Some things have a clever twist, others not so much -...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 7:34 AM
There have been no significant instances of economic data this week until today. These sorts of things happen, and it's usually Thursday that ends up...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 5:15 PM
Trading levels began the day in better territory this morning after a strong overnight session for Treasuries. It wasn't so much that they gained a...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 3:56 PM
Mortgage rates were mixed today depending on the lender, but moved just slightly lower on average. This wasn't the case this morning as essentia...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 3:16 PM
Freddie Mac's economists restated their February forecast in
their Economic and Housing Outlook just
released for March, that 2015 could be the b...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 10:50 AM
"Most mortgage bankers know that if they're attacked by a mob of clowns to go for the juggler."
And most mortgage bankers know whether or not the co...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 9:15 AM
Applications for purchase mortgages picked up a little steam this week
even as application volume overall remained flat. The Mortgage Bankers Associ...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 7:34 AM
The first two days of this week were "nice." They got us back in line with what had been the weakest levels of the year before last Friday. In oth...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 5:08 PM
German Bunds dropped to yet another new all-time low today, hitting 0.193 at one point. The Euro plummeted and stocks sold modestly. All of the ab...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 4:30 PM
Mortgage rates continued lower at a steady pace for most lenders today. The week continues to be slow in terms of domestic events and data, but ...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 1:21 PM
Today's 10yr auction was pretty good , although it required a bit of weakness leading up to it in order to generate the relatively strong result. Th...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 12:52 PM
Some magical combination of new QE tradeflows and Greek drama (surprisingly enough) has driven German Bund yields well into new all-time lows today. ...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 10:24 AM
It was hailed by NBC news on Monday as
the most radical change to credit reporting in decades and New York Attorney
General Eric T. Schneiderman s...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 10:17 AM
The
mortgage industry continues to deal with unintended consequences of
over-regulation, including higher prices for borrowers. The barrel
indus...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 7:34 AM
It ended up being interesting that the focus of yesterday's Week Ahead was the absence of data leaving us with a less obstructed view of traders' inte...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 5:29 PM
First, a quick point of order: remember that tonight is "the roll" for Fannie and Freddie 30yr Fixed MBS. That means March coupons will stop tradin...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 4:04 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower for second day today, with the combined improvements erasing roughly half of the losses seen on Friday. The brings ...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 2:03 PM
The percentage of consumers believing the economy is on the right track finally crossed paths with those who say the economy is on the wrong track i...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 1:49 PM
Completed foreclosures declined by
nearly a quarter over the course of 2014 CoreLogic said today, and the
foreclosure inventory has improved even ...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 12:59 PM
It's hard to know where to start discussing today's market activity, largely because today's market activity never really started . Ever since t...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 10:25 AM
Occasionally
I am asked about how the agencies handle certain types of debt. As a
reminder, Fannie Mae requires that all deferred installment debt...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 7:33 AM
Over the years, I've frequently gone back to the "limited data" theme on certain weeks where there is--well... limited data. The reason to mention/di...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 5:20 PM
On the morning after 'springing forward,' we could forgive a bit of confusion or a bit of fatigue as folks who use archaic alarms may have been runnin...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 4:32 PM
Mortgage rates managed to recover only some of Friday's heavy losses. The most prevalent conventional 30yr rate for top tier scenarios remains a...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 1:23 PM
Black Knight Financial Service's current Mortgage Monitor Report takes an in-depth
look at home affordability and foreclosure metrics, both based...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 1:09 PM
The share of all cash sales continue to fall in December along
with the volume of distressed property sales. CoreLogic said on Monday that
35.5 per...
Fri, Mar 6 2015, 12:32 PM
What is a dip-buyer? That's just a fancy term for an investor who has seen prices fall far enough to entice them to buy in the hopes of a bounce. It...
Fri, Mar 6 2015, 11:04 AM
Daylight
Savings commences for many parts of the U.S. dark and early Sunday
morning. For many this means spring is around the corner, with improve...
Fri, Mar 6 2015, 7:34 AM
For nearly a year, NFP hadn't mattered . That is to say, it ceased filling it's usual role as big-picture guidance giver. It was no longer setting ...
Fri, Mar 6 2015, 6:16 PM
We've been tracking a package from the BLS and new it was getting close as of Wednesday morning's major focus on employment metrics. Today we heard t...
Fri, Mar 6 2015, 4:38 PM
Mortgage rates were more or less obliterated today. Of course, everything's relative, so the obliteration is only relative to the average day of...
Fri, Mar 6 2015, 3:42 PM
It seems that taxes on real property reflect not only the
value of the property itself, but also how long the owner has held title. That was one f...
Thu, Mar 5 2015, 10:56 AM
Even though implementation of the Freddie Mac portion of the
new 97 percent conventional loan program is still weeks away the program
appears to be ...
Thu, Mar 5 2015, 10:49 AM
At
this time of year mortgage bankers everywhere are asking the same
critical question: "Is it acceptable to make an entire lunch out of Girl
Sc...
Thu, Mar 5 2015, 7:32 AM
When the ECB (European Central Bank) officially announced quantitative easing in January, they were pretty light on the details. At least that's true...
Thu, Mar 5 2015, 4:46 PM
Today's ECB press conference and QE details were indeed a hotly anticipated item, and they caused quite a stir for European bond markets (right where ...
Thu, Mar 5 2015, 4:38 PM
In a speech on Thursday the director of the Federal Housing
Finance Agency (FHFA) emphasized one of the three familiar goals of his agency's
2015 ...
Thu, Mar 5 2015, 3:38 PM
Mortgage rates held almost perfectly flat for the 2nd day in a row, despite market volatility caused by overseas events. The European Central Bank...
Thu, Mar 5 2015, 1:20 PM
Relative to its potential, today's release of ECB QE details turned out to inspire only modest volatility. Compared to an average day, however, the s...
Wed, Mar 4 2015, 12:39 PM
This morning's trading has been refreshingly straightforward. In fact, it's about as straightforward as it gets. Bond markets are clearly quite focu...
Wed, Mar 4 2015, 9:45 AM
Nothing
ruins your Friday like realizing it is only Wednesday! I lose track of
what we're celebrating this month: I was all geared up for the Iris...
Wed, Mar 4 2015, 9:12 AM
Mortgage applications were mixed and largely
flat during the week ended February 27.
The Mortgage Bankers Association said its Market Composite Ind...
