Fri, Jan 4 2013, 5:41 PM
One of the most
frequent concerns expressed in the survey was " unreasonably tight credit
conditions ", i.e. that some financial
institutions appea...
Fri, Jan 4 2013, 5:07 PM
Mortgage rates continued higher today, reaching their worst levels since before the Fed announced the specific buying program of Mortgage-Backed-Secur...
Fri, Jan 4 2013, 5:05 PM
What played out over the past two days has been almost exclusively a bond market phenomenon. Yesterday's FOMC Minute shake up had nothing to do with ...
Thu, Jan 3 2013, 11:49 AM
Even though yesterday's session wasn't technically "weak" between the open and close, it was definitely weaker day-over-day, as has been the case for ...
Thu, Jan 3 2013, 10:53 AM
Completed mortgage foreclosures have
declined 23 percent in the last year according to information released this
morning by CoreLogic. There were ...
Thu, Jan 3 2013, 10:30 AM
Fixed rate 30-yr. mortgages at 2.6%! Yippee!!! Oh...wait a minute...the
New York Fed tells us why they aren't there yet.
CMG Financial is a mu...
Thu, Jan 3 2013, 9:33 AM
Two of the tax breaks that were considered by many to be
important to the continued resurgence of the housing markets survived the last
minute cha...
Thu, Jan 3 2013, 9:24 AM
As is always expected, mortgage applications
activity for the last two full weeks of 2012 fell dramatically . The Mortgage Bankers Association (M...
Thu, Jan 3 2013, 7:33 AM
For bond markets, Thursday will offer an opportunity to confirm that the PRE-Fiscal-Cliff-Deal range is also the POST-Fiscal-Cliff-Deal range . F...
Thu, Jan 3 2013, 5:08 PM
Shortly before recessing for the holidays the Chairmen of
the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and of its Subcommittee on TARP, Fin...
Thu, Jan 3 2013, 5:05 PM
Mortgage rates soared to their highest levels in months today after Minutes from the Fed's most recent policy meeting showed the board to be more divi...
Thu, Jan 3 2013, 4:56 PM
It's ironic that this morning's "day ahead," pondered the possibility that economic data would creep back into the picture today with ADP Employment i...
Thu, Jan 3 2013, 4:55 PM
The two government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac have completed more than 2.5 million foreclosure prevention
actions s...
Wed, Jan 2 2013, 12:12 PM
The residential shadow inventory of distressed homes
continues to shrink according CoreLogic's monthly report for October. The improvement is acr...
Wed, Jan 2 2013, 11:35 AM
Referring to the 11th hour passage of a Fiscal Cliff bill as a "deal," is an overstatement. But it's at least a "mini-deal," or depending on how impo...
Wed, Jan 2 2013, 11:17 AM
On this Wednesday that seems like a Monday, politicians in Washington celebrated after kind of averting a completely unnecessary crisis that was ent...
Wed, Jan 2 2013, 8:13 AM
A few hours before the first business day of 2013, the House approved a bill to avert the Fiscal Cliff . Although some last minute effort was muster...
Wed, Jan 2 2013, 4:34 PM
The last-minute Fiscal Cliff deal clearly suggested that bond markets would have a tough day today , but with the nature of the deal being less than ...
Wed, Jan 2 2013, 4:08 PM
One of my favorite movies this time of year is Christmas Vacation. Being a multiple year winner of neighborhood light contests, I am inspired by the a...
Wed, Jan 2 2013, 2:48 PM
Mortgage rates moved to their highest levels since December 19th this morning after Congress passed a last-minute bill softening the blow of the F...
Mon, Dec 31 2012, 11:29 AM
With Japanese markets closed, overnight trading activity was light. 10yr Treasuries began the European hours in slightly weaker Territory than Friday...
Mon, Dec 31 2012, 10:48 AM
As our nation prepares to begin the new year, the U.S. Census Bureau
today projected that on Jan. 1, 2013, the total United States population
will ...
Mon, Dec 31 2012, 10:11 AM
Fourteen large banks appear ready to
pony up another $10 billion to end allegations of foreclosure abuse. According to the New York Times , the s...
Mon, Dec 31 2012, 9:56 AM
The Senate
has confirmed Carol Galante as head of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The confirmation will remove the term "acting"
from h...
Mon, Dec 31 2012, 4:22 PM
Today's headlines generally erred on the site of optimism for some sort of stop-gap Fiscal Cliff agreement and Treasuries began taking their lumps ear...
Mon, Dec 31 2012, 1:26 PM
Mortgage rates moved moderately higher to end the year, reversing last week's trend of small improvements. In Washington, Fiscal Cliff negotiations h...
Sun, Dec 30 2012, 10:16 PM
Both chambers of Congress worked over the weekend to ensure that no Fiscal Cliff deal would accidentally get passed or announced before the last poss...
Fri, Dec 28 2012, 11:38 AM
At first blush, headlines just before 11am indicating that the President
would offer up a scaled-back Fiscal Cliff deal today, seemed to be a
simp...
Fri, Dec 28 2012, 10:35 AM
Default rates for first mortgage loans
increased in both October and November according to the S&P Dow Jones
Indices and Experian. The increases d...
Fri, Dec 28 2012, 10:29 AM
The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) Pending Home Sales Index
reached the highest level seen in two and a half years in November after
po...
Fri, Dec 28 2012, 10:17 AM
"We're lost, but we're making good time." The CFPB does not seem to be
lost, and is certainly feeling its way along. From it we learned that between
...
Fri, Dec 28 2012, 8:20 AM
After the closing bells on Thursday, the White House announced that the President would be meeting with Majority and Minority Leaders from both the ...
Fri, Dec 28 2012, 4:51 PM
For a trading day that had a good amount of potential for volatility,
today turned out the be pretty tame, especially for MBS which held a 6
tick ...
Fri, Dec 28 2012, 2:55 PM
Mortgage
rates continued a moderate trend of improvement from
mid-week, bringing rates to their best levels of the week on Friday.
All of th...
Thu, Dec 27 2012, 11:21 AM
As expected, Thursday has proven to be the first real trading day of the
week. Those expectations were due to the fact that it's the first day
of...
Thu, Dec 27 2012, 10:57 AM
The Department of Housing and Urban
Development and the U.S. Census Bureau had more good news for housing this
morning. Sales of newly constructed...
Thu, Dec 27 2012, 9:57 AM
Okay, so here's something entirely un-mortgage related - productivity
this week stinks anyway. The kids are back from college, or on vacation from
s...
Thu, Dec 27 2012, 7:59 AM
Thursday is indeed the first day of the week as it's the first
day where politicians will be back in action, potentially churning out
last-minute...
Thu, Dec 27 2012, 4:19 PM
Treasuries put in a better performance than MBS today, thanks to the
"flight-to-safety" nature of this morning's rally. As expected,
economic dat...
Thu, Dec 27 2012, 2:30 PM
Mortgage rates moved slightly lower on Thursday after markets received
their first Fiscal Cliff update of the week. Earlier this morning,
Senate ...
Wed, Dec 26 2012, 12:57 PM
Mortgage
rates remained essentially unchanged this week as markets are
essentially still closed for the Christmas holiday. Technically,
fina...
Wed, Dec 26 2012, 11:46 AM
Equities were one of the only places that bond markets were going to get
any sort of guidance today given the fact that economic data is
inconsequ...
Wed, Dec 26 2012, 11:29 AM
The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI)
released this morning outstripped analysts expectations with strong increases
in home prices over ...
Wed, Dec 26 2012, 10:56 AM
Last week the commentary mentioned LO education for borrowers, but how about LO
education itself? I received some thoughtful notes on the subject.
...
Wed, Dec 26 2012, 7:48 AM
After a day and a half off, markets return to a full session on
Wednesday, but only in the sense that markets are open all day. Beyond
the techni...
Wed, Dec 26 2012, 4:51 PM
Considering that the Thanksgiving holiday always begins with full market
closure on a Thursday, you can usually count on the juxtaposed Friday to
...
Mon, Dec 24 2012, 12:24 PM
Mortgage rates moved slightly higher on Monday, though there were no material market movements driving the change. Lenders are erring on the side ...
Mon, Dec 24 2012, 11:23 AM
As-expected, it's been a silent morning for US trading and a surprisingly 'silent night' in Europe as well. There are no market movers, no instances o...
Mon, Dec 24 2012, 8:16 AM
If left to its own devices, the week ahead would be almost a complete non-issue, with little volume and inconsequential volatility due to 2-day Christ...
Fri, Dec 21 2012, 11:36 AM
Risk markets tanked early in the overnight session (stocks and bond yields sharply lower) after news hit that the House didn't have enough support for...
