Wed, Dec 17 2014, 4:46 PM
The person who perhaps made it possible for state and
federal governments to collect billions from the Bank of America will apparently
be amply co...
Tue, Dec 16 2014, 12:32 PM
All three of the U.S. Census Bureau/Department of Housing
and Urban Development construction indicators dropped in November from their
October leve...
Tue, Dec 16 2014, 12:32 PM
To be clear, bond markets are still in strongly positive territory this morning, though they're off their best levels seen just after 7am.
Volatil...
Tue, Dec 16 2014, 10:44 AM
Looking at
things in a different way works very well in marketing as well. Carol
Kimball sent along something for Realtors out there: selling a ho...
Tue, Dec 16 2014, 7:32 AM
Bond markets lost ground yesterday, which is notable in the context of recent events because other markets didn't necessarily agree. By that, I mean ...
Tue, Dec 16 2014, 4:14 PM
As Fannie 3.5 MBS pushed over 104 and 10yr yields moved down toward 2%, it became increasingly clear that the bond market rally required an ever-larg...
Tue, Dec 16 2014, 3:14 PM
Mortgage rates fell decisively today, bringing some lenders back in line with rate sheets seen on May 22nd, 2013. That's significant because it wa...
Mon, Dec 15 2014, 12:18 PM
Naturally, most headlines continue to credit oil for everything that's happening everywhere. That may be true in a roundabout way, but it's a harder ...
Mon, Dec 15 2014, 10:58 AM
Builder confidence as measured by the National
Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Home Market Index (HMI) fell
back slightly in Decem...
Mon, Dec 15 2014, 10:43 AM
"What I don't like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day." Here are a few tips on how to avoid that. And avoiding mortga...
Mon, Dec 15 2014, 7:32 AM
The conventional wisdom regarding falling knives is to avoid trying to catch them. 2014's bond yields have been a quintessential example. At each ...
Mon, Dec 15 2014, 4:37 PM
Mortgage rates held steady today on average, but were slightly higher or lower depending on the lender. In either case, there hasn't been much mov...
Mon, Dec 15 2014, 2:00 PM
The BuildFax Remodeling Index for October
indicates a slight slowdown in the number of building permits issued for the
purpose of residential remode...
Fri, Dec 12 2014, 12:51 PM
It's impossible to get away from oil headlines today. They're everywhere. Even smart people are succumbing to the temptation of oversimplifying the ...
Fri, Dec 12 2014, 10:43 AM
"You
can tell a lot about a woman's mood just by her hands. If they are
holding a gun, she's probably ticked-off." Here's another observation,
b...
Fri, Dec 12 2014, 7:32 AM
When the variables informing trading decisions are more confusing, more diverse, and/or more numerous than normal, there's one old standby to fall bac...
Fri, Dec 12 2014, 5:24 PM
Bank of America was hit this week with
another civil penalty , this time for making what are termed excessive and
harassing mortgage debt collectio...
Fri, Dec 12 2014, 5:19 PM
Good news! It seems that--thanks to some magical domino effect having to do with oil--that this week's market movements can't do anything else but co...
Fri, Dec 12 2014, 5:19 PM
Amid the wrangling over the
budget and the CIA report the Senate did manage to extend some extra
foreclosure protections for military service memb...
Fri, Dec 12 2014, 4:16 PM
Mortgage rates improved again today rounding out an entire week of gains. They're nothing to shake a stick at, either. Although the most prevalen...
Thu, Dec 11 2014, 12:18 PM
Bond markets had an uneventful overnight session for the most part. Heading into the 7am hour, yields improved to their lowest levels of the morning ...
Thu, Dec 11 2014, 10:58 AM
"Karma
means that I can rest easy at night knowing that all the people I
treated badly had it coming." But there is also good karma, and the MBA
...
Thu, Dec 11 2014, 7:33 AM
Bond markets seemingly rallied rather impressively yesterday. In other words, the magnitude of the gains and levels achieved would have been impres...
Thu, Dec 11 2014, 5:18 PM
With 10yr yields less than half a bp lower and Fannie 3.5s and 3.0s a mere 1 tick lower, we're effectively unchanged to end the day. That's a victor...
Thu, Dec 11 2014, 4:06 PM
Mortgage rates didn't move much today, depending on the lender. Lenders that reissued improved rate sheets yesterday afternoon are generally in th...
Thu, Dec 11 2014, 3:34 PM
The Housing
Finance Policy Center, part of the Urban Institute, has released a new measure of
credit availability . In an article in
the Urban In...
Thu, Dec 11 2014, 1:31 PM
While overall foreclosure activity overall
continued its now years-long decline from housing crisis peaks there was a
significant year-over-year inc...
Wed, Dec 10 2014, 12:54 PM
"Leak" is definitely one of those words that, if you say it enough, it starts to sound funny. One way to hear it pretty reliably is to tune in to the...
Wed, Dec 10 2014, 10:32 AM
Winston
Churchill said, "There are a terrible lot of lies going around the
world, and the worst of it is half of them are true." Figures don't lie...
Wed, Dec 10 2014, 9:49 AM
The
week ended December 5 was another of those post-holiday periods when mortgage
application data skews all over the place just as it did during th...
Wed, Dec 10 2014, 7:32 AM
Late in November, I suggested that the first week of December would give us the information needed to identify the trend that would carry us into the ...
Wed, Dec 10 2014, 4:39 PM
For two days in a row, the Fed hasn't had a Fannie/Freddie 30yr buying operation , and that's been painfully evident in the underperformance of MBS c...
Wed, Dec 10 2014, 3:59 PM
Mortgage rates moved only slightly lower
today, but it was enough to bring the end-of-day average to the lowest
in more than a year an a half. ...
Wed, Dec 10 2014, 2:47 PM
Cash
sales continued to decline in importance in September. These sales, which represented close to half
of all home sales when foreclosures and le...
Tue, Dec 9 2014, 10:45 AM
No
one wants to see their companies and future employment batted around in
the press, but perhaps our brethren and Freddie and Fannie are
accust...
Tue, Dec 9 2014, 7:32 AM
Yesterday morning, we were hoping that bond markets would find near-term technical support from Friday's weakest levels. Today, we're hoping for a di...
Tue, Dec 9 2014, 5:09 PM
Admittedly there are far more than 2 reasons for anything in financial markets to do anything. But when it comes to "the why" behind the ability of...
Tue, Dec 9 2014, 3:55 PM
Mortgage rates fell again today, bringing them very close to their lowest levels in more than a year and a half. US bond markets (including Trea...
Tue, Dec 9 2014, 2:02 PM
While
the dream of homeownership has been sidelined for many, it appears to have not been
derailed. Freddie Mac says the responses of renters to a...
Tue, Dec 9 2014, 1:15 PM
Credit
access increased in November, again primarily because of new jumbo loan
products. The Mortgage Bankers
Association (MBA) said its Mortgage ...
Tue, Dec 9 2014, 1:01 PM
It's not that China isn't an important cog in the global economy, but the tendency for major media outlets to focus on it as some sort of central mark...
Mon, Dec 8 2014, 10:57 AM
Folks
who have all their retirement money tied up in Ocwen shares hope that
they don't go the way of Lehman Brothers, PNC, Countrywide, WAMU, and ...
Mon, Dec 8 2014, 7:33 AM
Any time we see an Employment Situation report come in as strong as last Friday's, it causes some measure of concern for follow-through trading. In...
Mon, Dec 8 2014, 4:33 PM
Mortgage rates improved to
begin the new week--a welcome development considering last week ended
with a strong jobs report and a moderate mov...
Mon, Dec 8 2014, 4:33 PM
European bond markets broke out to an early lead in the overnight session with Treasuries doing a great job of resisting the gains. It's not that U...
Mon, Dec 8 2014, 1:35 PM
After closing to its narrowest margin in survey history in October the gulf between people who think the current market it a good one for buyers and/...
Mon, Dec 8 2014, 1:27 PM
The two government sponsored
enterprises (GSEs) announced details today of their respective new low
downpayment conventional mortgage loans.
Each ...
Mon, Dec 8 2014, 1:19 PM
There was a big drop in the S&P just after the noon hour, and it's being attributed to slumping energy shares or some such thing. Frankly, I haven'...
Fri, Dec 5 2014, 10:54 AM
Yesterday
at the MBA's IMB conference, besides folks talking about Chase
correspondent pricing through the market, wondering if 4:1 is the magic...
Fri, Dec 5 2014, 7:32 AM
This time last year when 10yr yields were at 2.86 the night before NFP, I remember thinking about where we might be by the end of 2013 and then about ...
