Mon, Jan 24 2022, 3:51 PM
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) says the effects of higher home prices and tight inventories appear to be weighing on home buying de...
Mon, Jan 24 2022, 3:48 PM
MBS Flip Script After Treasury Auction; Bonds Refuse to Chase Stocks
It was a fairly sloppy day of gains for...
Mon, Jan 24 2022, 12:45 PM
Freddie Mac’s first quarterly forecast for 2022 cites the need for improvement in the nation’s employment picture. Even though the December report fro...
Mon, Jan 24 2022, 11:42 AM
Anyone who’s seen 1968’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” remembers the talking computer HAL (whose name was cleverly derived from subtracting one letter from ...
Mon, Jan 24 2022, 9:57 AM
Bonds are off to stronger start for a 4th straight trading session. As such, they're following the same pattern as the rally attempt 2 weeks ago (whi...
Fri, Jan 21 2022, 8:09 PM
The bond market returned from a 3 day weekend to find yields surging higher on Tuesday. That pushed mortgage rates to fresh 2 year highs and added em...
Fri, Jan 21 2022, 3:35 PM
Another Green Day But MBS Underperform
Bonds rallied today with 10yr yields dropping more than 6bps by the 3...
Fri, Jan 21 2022, 2:18 PM
While new home sales have been performing well over the last few months, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) expects a stumble in December. Its Bui...
Fri, Jan 21 2022, 2:14 PM
In its first look at December’s loan performance data, Black Knight notes that 2021 ended with the foreclosure inventory at an all-time low and the ...
Fri, Jan 21 2022, 11:26 AM
Bonds are off to an even stronger start on Friday, largely in response to a big risk-off move that rifled through markets in the last 90 minutes of tr...
Fri, Jan 21 2022, 10:57 AM
As I head to Northern California, and mourning the loss of Meatloaf, I’m thinking, “Dang. I guess that I shouldn’t have put my entire 401(k) into Pelo...
Thu, Jan 20 2022, 4:14 PM
Still Waiting on Fed Above All Else
Bonds enjoyed another day of modest improvement on Thursday. On the plu...
Thu, Jan 20 2022, 3:31 PM
Today was one of the most uneventful days in recent memory for mortgage rates. The average lender is in very similar territory compared to yesterda...
Thu, Jan 20 2022, 2:23 PM
Fannie Mae’s Economic & Strategic Research (ESR) Group writes that it expects 2022 to be a year “of transition for both the economy and the housing ma...
Thu, Jan 20 2022, 11:36 AM
Existing home sales dropped in December, snapping a three-month streak of increases. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said the month’s sale...
Thu, Jan 20 2022, 11:01 AM
While there’s plenty of chatter out there about the return of Better.com’s CEO to its helm, and its interesting business model how LOs are supposedly ...
Thu, Jan 20 2022, 9:55 AM
For the second day this week, bonds are off to a stronger start. The pattern is similar to last week where yields hit new long-term highs on the first...
Wed, Jan 19 2022, 4:22 PM
Mortgage rates have been having a bad 2022 so far with the average lender up to the highest levels in roughly 2 years as of yesterday. The reason? T...
Wed, Jan 19 2022, 4:06 PM
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) has initiated a new monthly Loan Monitoring Survey , to replace its Weekly Forbearance and Call Volume Survey...
Wed, Jan 19 2022, 3:58 PM
Decent Day, But There's a Catch
Bonds improved today! The rally was moderate by typical standards, but it f...
Wed, Jan 19 2022, 10:53 AM
Residential construction numbers exceeded expectations again in December. Most of the gains, however, came from the multifamily sector. The U.S. Ce...
Wed, Jan 19 2022, 10:02 AM
Remember last Thursday? Bonds had done a great job of pushing back in a friendly direction after a huge week of selling kicked off the new year. Tha...
Wed, Jan 19 2022, 9:02 AM
As I head to Orlando this morning for business meetings, much of the concern is about Treasury yields, with mortgage rates tagging along, climbing to ...
Wed, Jan 19 2022, 8:46 AM
Interest rates for fixed rate mortgage products shot up by at least a dozen basis points during the week ended January 14, still the volume of purchas...
Tue, Jan 18 2022, 4:12 PM
One of the very few welcome byproducts of the pandemic was the pervasive availability of new all-time low mortgage rates. Depending on when you c...
Tue, Jan 18 2022, 3:52 PM
Snowball Selling Continues. Why?
In not so many words, most of the rate drama seen during the past 3 weeks i...
Tue, Jan 18 2022, 11:12 AM
Builder confidence stumbled a bit this month, breaking a four-month streak that had pushed moved the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/We...
Tue, Jan 18 2022, 10:38 AM
Bonds sold off last Friday after 4 days of relative stability and improvement to start the week. Optimists hoped the weakness was a byproduct of the ...
Tue, Jan 18 2022, 9:52 AM
The refinance share of originations in November remained at 53 percent for the third month even though the average interest rate on 30-year fixed-ra...
Tue, Jan 18 2022, 9:43 AM
While rates continue higher, from South Carolina comes, “I just got 30 minutes of cardio trying to pick up an ice cube off the kitchen floor.” Plenty ...
Fri, Jan 14 2022, 7:20 PM
In the past 2 weeks, press coverage of the Federal Reserve's policy outlook has ramped up significantly. The Fed is now expected to start hiking rate...
Fri, Jan 14 2022, 5:51 PM
Friday's Sell-Off Makes Rest Of The Week Look Like a Trap
Over the past 2 days, we've pondered the fate of t...
Fri, Jan 14 2022, 11:41 AM
Friday is not shaping up to be a great day for the mortgage bond market. Our benchmark guidance giver of choice (10yr yield) is in the midst of a pot...
Fri, Jan 14 2022, 11:21 AM
ATTOM says that foreclosure activity in the year just ended was at the lowest level since the company began tracking it in 2005. Foreclosure filings...
Fri, Jan 14 2022, 11:15 AM
It’s Friday, things have slowed down a little bit, and I appreciate you taking a break from Wordle to check out today’s Commentary. Here’s a riddle: W...
Thu, Jan 13 2022, 4:16 PM
Just Enough of a Rally to Keep Things Interesting
Coming into the day, we were pondering the fate of this we...
Thu, Jan 13 2022, 4:06 PM
In almost every case, a day of bond market improvement results in rates moving lower. That makes sense considering mortgage rates are based primarily...
Thu, Jan 13 2022, 11:20 AM
2022 is already off to an “interesting” start. Going directly to the borrower , normally the role of brokers, lenders, MI companies, and other mortga...
Thu, Jan 13 2022, 11:12 AM
Whether we refer to it as a correction or consolidation, bonds have enjoyed a few days of moderate gains after selling off abruptly last week. Today'...
Wed, Jan 12 2022, 4:45 PM
Mixed Signals in Data, Events, and The Market Reaction.
The hotly anticipated CPI data came in roughly in li...
Wed, Jan 12 2022, 4:25 PM
Interest rates are typically determined by bond market. Mortgage rates, for instance, are directly tied to mortgage-specific bonds know as mortgage-b...
Wed, Jan 12 2022, 12:08 PM
Most people are paid wages… will raises keep up with an annualized inflation rate of 7 percent? Others may receive a large payout from the sale of the...
Wed, Jan 12 2022, 11:36 AM
Yesterday's resilient trading day strengthened the case for a corrective (or consolidative ?) bounce after last week's big yield spike. Traders (a...
Wed, Jan 12 2022, 9:39 AM
There was a small uptick in purchase mortgage activity during the first week of 2022. Refinancing held its own despite significant increases in in...
Tue, Jan 11 2022, 4:39 PM
2022 has gotten off to a bad start for the bond market and consequently, mortgage rates. The pace has been on the aggressive side with the average ...
Tue, Jan 11 2022, 4:12 PM
Is it Time To Get Excited About a Bounce?
As per the recent norm, bonds were fairly flat overnight and began...
Tue, Jan 11 2022, 2:58 PM
Mortgage credit loosened a bit last month but the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA’s) Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI) which measures cr...
Tue, Jan 11 2022, 2:51 PM
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) says that, after a few months of moderating lumber prices following the rapid runup in early spring...
Tue, Jan 11 2022, 11:05 AM
As freezing temperatures continue on in the Midwest and Northeast, keeping people inside, I doubt if there is a single person in the United States who...
Tue, Jan 11 2022, 10:44 AM
The national delinquency rate declined for the 7th consecutive month in October. CoreLogic’s Loan Performance Insights Report for the month says tha...
